ASIAN 371: Topics in Chinese Literature: Cultural History of the Senses in Modern China (Summer 2024) : Evaluating Resources and AI Credibility

• Evaluating sources for reliability and usefulness - Tip sheet (PDF)
• Peer review in three minutes (Video)
  • Explains what peer review is
  • From North Carolina State University libraries
• Identifying scholarly articles - Tip sheet

The following research guides contain descriptions of primary sources.

• Primary Sources for Humanities and Social Sciences
• Introduction to Historical Research, with a section on primary sources

Do AI Chatbots Provide Credible Information?

ChatGPT and other AI chatbots can be powerful tools in some contexts, but have been found to be unreliable when searching for credible information. 

AI chatbots:

• are predictive text generators, not search engines; they are designed to respond to questions in a human-like manner, not to find reliable information sources

• do not evaluate for accuracy, bias, or credibility

• can generate factually incorrect statements

• make up (“hallucinate”) sources

• link to sources that are irrelevant to the output or do not support claims in the output

• do not respond to prompts consistently

• are trained on undisclosed data that: 

  • retains systemic biases found online

  • generally does not include paywalled scholarly articles

  • may not be current