I appreciate this distinction. I was an elementary education major for two years and using copyrighted photos for anything meant to be used by instructors in a classroom without permission is copyright infringement, unlike if a student uses it. I sort of forgot that that wasn't the rule for most students.

I tried Zotero on a Word document after reading about it here and it was a pretty useful tool for citation management. It saves some time and helps prevent the sources I'm citing from getting mixed in with other things I save on my laptop.

This is an important detail to keep in mind and an example of why it's important to understand who the audience for your work is.

It's good to know that these organizations still count as authors, as not having a named person as the author used to dissuade me from using those sources when I was younger.

Worth noting also that some websites/organizations may sell your data to advertisers or call centers. I recommend having an email address to use just for these kinds of things so your primary one doesn't get flooded with garbage

I didn't know about this; I'll need to find some info on how to use this feature because it would be very helpful.

Extremely important. I've found that, for a lot of searches, most of the first page is sponsored messages or websites trying to sell me something

I've never used one of these; glad to find out this is an option

This is how you end up with heavily biased writing; I'd keep an eye out for these things in the sources you use too.

I remember having to come up with a research question for a project I did last semester. I had to change it several times before I landed on one that I liked.

This is another rule that was hammered into my head as a child: never use Wikipedia. The criticisms and concerns are completely valid, but I think it is important to stress that you CAN use Wikipedia, just not in the same way you'd use scholarly sources.

I like to check out the resources used for Wikipedia pages. Sometimes there are good sources down there, sometimes there aren't

This also goes for really niche topics; I've had some research questions where i struggle to find anything that specifically discusses the issues I'm interested in.

Statistical information is some of my favorite to use, but I think it's important to keep in mind how statistics are easily swayed and are not a precise measurement, but rather an approximation.

I'm glad this distinction was made. Once again, when I was a child, I was always taught that my sources HAD to have been published within the last three to five years. While recent sources do seem to be better than older ones, I was never taught that older publications are still an option in a lot of circumstances.

It's great to know of ways to check the reliability and content of a source without having to read the whole thing. I think a lot of people are dissuaded from checking sources and using scholarly sources because the articles can be long and intimidating.

Always important to remember that bias is not something that only appears in unreliable or misleading sources; everyone has bias

This is a great point. I've seen plenty of non-profit organizations make some crazy arguments with very little solid research. That's why it's also a great idea to do research on a charity or non-profit organization before donating to them.

I'm glad there's a section about this. When I was younger, I remember checking the domain of a website being treated as an extremely reliable means of checking the credibility of a website and having teachers explicitly tell me to never use a source with a .com domain. I'm glad to find out that that was ridiculous advice.

This is good advice; I remember one time when my boyfriend became interested in a specific topic within physics (forgive me, I can't remember what exactly), bought a short book on the subject, noticed some strange things in the text, looked up the author and found out that he had no experience working in the field and had also published works about hollow earth theory.

I have not been exposed; reminder to look at this

This got me thinking about how the general population tends to have more interest in a topic while it's ongoing and relevant rather than later on, which means that people who have the most interest early on likely aren't getting a lot of good information on the topic.

I don't know why I never thought about it before, but I hadn't realized that conferences were something that could easily be accessed and used as a scholarly source. I guess you just have to know where to find them.

I think this explains why people should not rely solely on the news for information. You are often only getting a brief, politically biased explanation of the events, and it's very common for important events and information to never be covered at all.

Writing these down; I'd like to remember these when doing research

I always like seeing these kinds of gimmick accounts on social media. I follow several biologists on tumblr who respond to viral videos of animals and explain whether what's happening is appropriate and calling out false information. I think it goes to show just how prevalent misleading information is online.