When writing for a general audience online, consider that many people do not have access to a research library, nor paid subscriptions to academic journal articles. If you can find high quality sources that are not behind a paywall, more readers can follow your citations to read the sources. Open Access publications serve this purpose.
Open Access means that anyone can read the item without paying a fee. For instance, the Daily Emerald online is Open Access, while the New York Times is behind a paywall -- they might let you look at a couple articles for free, but after that they want you to pay to read.
Many of the resources linked to here are behind paywalls, but many are also on the open web. This is true of all types of resources, from statistics, to images, to peer-reviewed journal articles. Often, even an academic article that you find behind a paywall, has a legally posted free (Open Access) version that you can link to, so it's worth doing a quick search to find those versions when making wikipedia citations.
Likewise, consider who has written your sources - who are you giving voice to by citing them? For instance, are you only sharing the voices of one dominant facet of society or are you making sure to share the research and viewpoints of less-heard groups?
And finally, be sure to cite all the ideas, quotations, and other items you use, and make sure that you are respecting copyright if you reproduce or post an image, video, audio, or full text on the open web.
Use the links/tabs on this page to find a wide variety of sources for your research:
And please contact us for research help!
Miriam Rigby - rigby@uoregon.edu
Kate Thornhill - kmthorn@uoregon.edu
1501 Kincaid Street
Eugene, OR 97403
P: 541-346-3053
F: 541-346-3485