# What Counts as an Academic Source? > [!note] This page answers one of the most common questions I get about research assignments. Read it before you start gathering sources. This comes up in almost every course that involves a research paper. The short answer is that not everything you can find and read counts as an academic source. Graduate theological research requires sources that have been through some kind of scholarly accountability process: peer review, editorial oversight, documented citation practices, credible publication. The guidelines below will help you figure out whether a source makes the cut. --- ## Why This Matters When you cite a source, you are vouching for it. You are saying, in effect, *this is reliable enough to build an argument on.* The purpose of requiring academic sources is to make sure the claims and data you draw on have been tested by other scholars in the field, not just asserted by someone with a blog or a self-publishing account. --- ## What Counts ### Books from Academic or Reputable Publishers The publisher is one of the first things to look at. Anyone can self-publish a book today, and a growing portion of what shows up on Amazon is self-published, AI-generated, or produced without any scholarly accountability. Before you cite a book, find out who published it. **Reliable publisher types to look for:** - **University presses**: Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Yale University Press, Duke University Press, and others. These exist specifically to publish peer-reviewed scholarly work. - **Academic imprints of major publishers**: look for "Academic" in the publisher name: B&H Academic, Baker Academic, IVP Academic, Lexham Academic, Zondervan Academic. That label signals the press applied a higher standard to the title. - **Established theological and scholarly publishers**: Eerdmans, Fortress Press, T&T Clark, Brill, Mohr Siebeck, Westminster John Knox. These have long track records of serious scholarly publication. **Things to check when you are not sure about a publisher:** - Look at the endorsements. Are they from scholars you can actually identify with a basic search, or are they vague and unverifiable? - Does the book have footnotes or endnotes that cite sources? A book making historical or theological claims without telling you where that information comes from is doing assertion, not scholarship. - Does it have a bibliography? An index? > [!tip] A simple test > Ask yourself: would this book show up on a syllabus at a respected seminary or university? If yes, you are probably fine. --- ### Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles Peer-reviewed journal articles are among the most reliable sources available to you. Before an article is accepted by an academic journal, it is reviewed anonymously by other scholars in the field who evaluate its research, argumentation, and accuracy. That process is what makes it trustworthy. **Journals you are likely to encounter in this field:** - *International Bulletin of Mission Research* - *Missiology: An International Review* - *Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations* - *The Muslim World* - *Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society* - *Themelios* - *Evangelical Quarterly* - *Journal of Biblical Literature* - *Studies in World Christianity* The simplest way to make sure you are using peer-reviewed articles is to go through the SEBTS library rather than a general web search. When you access articles through databases like ATLA Religion Database, JSTOR, or EBSCOhost, you are already working within vetted academic journals. If you are not sure how to access those databases, the library staff can help you get started. --- ### Primary Sources Primary sources count, and depending on your research question, they may be some of your most important sources. A primary source is original, firsthand material rather than someone else's interpretation of it. **Examples of legitimate primary sources in this field:** - A newspaper article written at the time of a historical event you are researching - Demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Pew Research Center, or the United Nations Population Division - Missionary letters, denominational records, council minutes, or confessional statements - A direct interview with a subject matter expert (documented with date and format) - Original theological texts: the Quran, Talmudic literature, church fathers, Reformation documents, and similar > [!important] > Primary sources document what happened or what was said. They do not replace the interpretive work of secondary scholarship. Most papers will need both. --- ## What Does Not Count Toward Your Minimum ### Blog Posts Even when written by a credible scholar, a blog post has not gone through peer review and does not carry the same weight as published academic work. Blog posts can be useful for tracking a scholar's current thinking or pointing you toward their formal work, but they do not count toward your minimum number of academic sources. > [!note] One exception > If you have a clear reason to cite a particular blog post (a public statement by a key figure in an ongoing debate, for instance) go ahead and include it. Just do not count it as one of your academic sources. --- ### Self-Published Books Without Standard Publication Identifiers If a book does not have an ISBN (International Standard Book Number) or a Library of Congress catalog number, be cautious. These identifiers are not hard to obtain, and their absence usually means the book did not go through any standard publishing process (no editorial review, no fact-checking, no scholarly accountability). > [!warning] A note on AI-generated books > A growing number of self-published titles, particularly on Amazon, are generated by AI with little or no human oversight. They can look polished and may even include citations, but there is no real scholarly accountability behind them. If you cannot verify an author's credentials anywhere, trust that instinct. One exception: books published more than roughly 100 years ago predate modern publication identifiers and may still be legitimate primary or historical sources. Evaluate those on their own merits. --- ### Books Written Below Graduate Level A book from a reputable publisher is not automatically a graduate-level source. I have had students try to cite children's books because they liked the way something was phrased about a historical figure. A children's book published by B&H is still a children's book. The question is whether the book is written for a scholarly audience or for a general, popular, or younger audience. Books written for children, general church readers, or devotional use serve real purposes, they just do not count as graduate sources, even when they are accurate and well-produced. If you want to quote a popular-level book for a specific reason, that is fine. Just do not count it toward your required academic sources. --- ### Websites in General Ministry websites, denominational pages, Wikipedia, and general online reference tools are not academic sources. Wikipedia is genuinely useful for getting oriented on a topic and finding pointers to real sources -- but it is not citable in a graduate paper. **Some web-based sources are acceptable:** - Government and international agency sites (census.gov, unhcr.org, pewresearch.org) for statistical and demographic data - Digitized primary source archives hosted online - Peer-reviewed journal articles you access through a website, as long as they originate in an academic journal When you are unsure about a website, ask yourself who is responsible for the content and how you would know if something on it were wrong. --- ## A Quick Checklist Before you add a source to your bibliography, run through these: - [ ] Is the publisher a university press, an academic imprint, or an established theological publisher? - [ ] Does the book have an ISBN or Library of Congress number? - [ ] Does the source cite its own sources through footnotes, endnotes, or a bibliography? - [ ] If it is an article, does it come from a peer-reviewed journal? - [ ] Is it written at a graduate or scholarly level? - [ ] If it is a primary source, is it properly identified and documented? If you are uncertain about a source, bring it to office hours or send me an email before you build your paper around it. It is much easier to swap a source early than to revise a completed draft. --- ## One Last Thing The students who consistently produce strong research papers are usually the ones who start at the library rather than Google. The SEBTS library databases are filtered for scholarly material by default. Learn to use them. The librarians are there to help, and that skill will serve you long past graduation. --- *For questions, contact me during office hours or by email.*