Academic article
Source checklist before summarizing or studying
A pre-study checklist for source type, completeness, instructions and traceability.
6 min read
01
Identify source type and purpose
Decide whether you are working with a textbook chapter, lecture, article, exam instruction or personal note. Each serves a different study purpose.
02
Check completeness
Inspect the beginning, ending and section structure. A missing page can still produce clean-looking output that does not represent the whole source.
03
Separate source from instructions
Keep instructor instructions about included or excluded material clearly separate from the original source.
04
Keep a path back to evidence
A summary or quiz should lead back to the source that supports it, especially for exact definitions, figures and claims that need verification.