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Introduction
What is Critical Thinking?
Thinking Fast and Slow
How Confident Are You in Your Reasoning Skills?
Thinking in an Informed Way
A Word About Values
What About Assumptions?
Chapter Attribution
Barriers to Critical Thinking
Social Conditioning
Labeling
Stereotypes
Fallacies
Is It an Argument?
Standard Argument Form
Kinds of Arguments
Explanations and Reported Arguments
Making an Argument
Components of an Argument
Order of the Components
Where You Get the Components
Helping Others Follow
The Purpose of Research Questions
Background Reading
Narrowing a Topic
Regular vs. Research Questions
Influence of a Research Question
Developing Your Research Question
Sources and Information Needs
Sources to Meet Needs
Thinking About the Roles of Sources
Synthesis of Your Own Ideas
BEAM: A Solution that Might Shine
Using BEAM
Practice with BEAM
BEAM Reference Chart
Planning Your Sources
Categorizing Sources
Quantitative or Qualitative Information
Fact or Opinion
Primary, Secondary & Tertiary Sources
Popular, Professional, & Scholarly
Publication Formats and the Information Lifecycle
Scholarly Articles as Sources
News as a Source
Data as Sources
People as Sources
Why Precision Searching?
Main Concepts
Related and Alternative Terms
Search Statements
Library Catalog
WorldCat
Google Scholar
Library Databases
Web Search Engines
Tips for Common Search Tools
Thinking Critically About Sources
SIFT
Stop
Investigate the Source
Find and Confirm
Track down the Original Content
Evaluating Data as Sources
Ethical Use and Citing Sources
Why Cite Sources?
When to Quote, Paraphrase, or Summarize
Challenges in Citing Sources
Citation and Citation Styles
Steps for Citing
Citation Management
When to Cite
What Is Fair Use?
What Is Copyright?
What Copyright Covers
Public Domain and Term of Copyright
Creative Commons
Copyright Rights & Exceptions
Respecting Copyright
Works Cited
About the Authors
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Critical Thinking in Academic Research Copyright © 2022 by Cindy Gruwell and Robin Ewing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.