What is the Information Cycle?
The Information Cycle is the progression of media coverage of a newsworthy event. It refers to how information is produced and distributed over time.
Understanding the Information Cycle will help you determine what types of sources may be available for your research topic. Information comes from different sources including:
- Social media (Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, etc.)
- Mainstream Media (TV news, Internet news, etc)
- Popular Magazines
- Scholarly Journals
- Books
When researching a topic, you need to investigate a variety of sources to gather enough information.
The Information Cycle Infographic
What is Peer Reviewed?
What is Peer Review (text)
The peer review process is a part of the research process. Remember! The research process is cyclical.
What does it mean when an article is peer reviewed?
- First, scientists do some science.
- Then, they write up their findings.
- They submit their article to a journal for peer review.
- The journal sends the article to other experts in the same field to review before publishing.
- If the article stands up to peer review (review by the scientists' peers) it can be published in the journal.
- Other researchers can now use that research to do their own research.
And the process begins again.