Help:Find sources

This help page is a how-to guide. It explains concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community. It is not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus.

Shortcuts H:FIND WP:FIND

This page in a nutshell: About finding sources to support a specific Wikipedia article. For finding a source you have already identified, see Wikipedia:Find your source.

Many of the best sources are not available online, or are only available under subscription. For example, many books are not available online at all, and subscription to academic databases such as

Many types of sources are available, although some are appropriate only in certain situations.

• Scholarly articles: short papers published in academic journals. They may present original research or review the research of others. Many undergo a process of peer review before publication. Watch two short videos on traditional peer review and a comparison to open peer review.
• Books and monographs: longer academic or popular works.
• Textbooks: an instructional or educational manual covering a particular subject area.
• Dictionaries and encyclopedias
  : reference works containing multiple entries for different words or topics. Wikipedia is an example of an encyclopedia.
• This page
  outlines appropriate use of primary sources.
• Magazine articles: short papers in popular or trade publications.
• This page
  assesses the reliability of news content.
• Reports and other grey literature: a broad category that includes most government documents, conference proceedings, and other writings not provided by traditional publishers.
• Statistics: data, particularly census data, and analysis.
• This page
  describes some of the considerations in using these types of sources.
• Websites, blogs and other user-generated sources: online content from a variety of authors/publishers. Reliability depends on the editorial control of the website.
  This page
  discusses issues with user-generated content.

• search engines are effective for finding online sources in particular, but can also be used for some other kinds of sources depending on the topic area. This video
  outlines the fundamentals of "advanced search" techniques.
  • Wikipedia editors have created custom Google search engines to help find sources on websites that Wikipedia editors have determined are generally more reliable.
• Several
  general search engines exist for more academic material, particularly scholarly articles, although some content will be behind a paywall: examples are Google Scholar, BASE and the Internet Archive's https://scholar.archive.org/ . This longer video
  outlines the use of some Google Scholar features.
• Internet Archive and Google Books index millions of books, both academic and popular; however, not all will be available in full text.
  • This video introduces the use of Internet Archive for research.
  • Several publishers make multiple editions of their books available through Google Books. Sometimes, Google initially returns a link only to the e-book edition, but that edition may include links to alternate hardcover or softcover editions which do have original pagination. Google Books limits previews of copyrighted books to a certain number of pages. It is possible to jump ahead to exhaust that number from a later starting page by editing the browser URL. For example, adding "&pg=PA100" will usually jump to page 100.
    WP:GBOOKS
    explains how to cite sources found through Google Books.
  • Installing the
    Unpaywall
    extension on your browser helps you find the full text of the articles wherever you found them.
• Public or research libraries have both books and research databases, covering a wide variety of subject areas.
  Find yours
  .
• See if any
  free resources
  cover the topic area
  • Wikipedia:Free English newspaper sources (WP:FENS) provides a list of text-searchable, free (no-pay, non-subscription/-membership/-login) online English newspaper sources.
• request help with research
  .
• Bibliographies on a topic outline the main scholarly sources in a subject area and provide a good starting point, where they are available.
• Once you have found one good scholarly source, you can see what sources it cites and what cited it (citation chaining). This video describes citation chaining using Google Scholar.
• If you are having trouble accessing a particular source, e.g. due to privacy laws, try this list of ways to get around IP-based restrictions.

Issues to consider in deciding whether a source is

• Who is the author? What are their qualifications and reputation? Do they have any identifiable biases?
• Who is the publisher? Is the work
  self-published
  ? Does the publisher have a history of editorial reputation? Does the publisher have any biases?
• When was the source published? Is the information outdated?
• Does the source cite its own sources? Is it based on facts or opinions?
• Is the source
  primary, secondary, or tertiary
  ?
• Are there any obvious errors or omissions?

To help find sources, Wikipedians have developed a number of

Example of {{find sources}}:

{{find sources|human disguise}} produces: Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Example of {{find sources multi}}:

{{find sources multi|human disguise|link1=g|link2=gnews|link3=ddg}} produces: Google · Google News · DuckDuckGo

For subjects that have several names or spellings, it may be desirable to use more than one search. This can be as simple as using several {{find sources}} templates.

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