Research tips

Habits for finding a source that supports your exact sentence, not just your topic.

Before you cite anything

Point to the sentence in the source that says what your sentence says. If you can't, the source doesn't support you yet.

If a news story reports a study, find the study. Numbers change as they get passed along.

Look for an author, an organisation and a date. A page that hides all three is hard to trust.

Open a new tab and search the source's name. What others say about a site tells you more than its own About page.

A ten-year-old figure can't support a claim about this year. Use the newest data that answers your question.

Follow its references to the sources underneath, and cite those instead.

Place Good for Cost

Google Scholar Scholarly papers, and "Cited by" to find newer work on the same question. Free

Your library's databases Journals and newspapers your school or public library pays for. Free with a library card

Government and agency data Statistics, from the agency that collected them, like the CDC or the Census Bureau. Free

OpenAlex A free index of hundreds of millions of scholarly works, and one of the places Tracely searches. Free