Often we get so busy that we don’t always have the energy or time to look up what’s happening in the world of research and news. To help you with that problem, here are some great online research based sites that you can sign up to their newsletters or just view their sites:

  1. ArsTechnica
    • a science and technology based news site that covers news relating to those topics as well as policy news
  2. The Conversation
    • an academic newspaper, with articles written by academics, on all topics. Choose the ones that interest you or browse all!
  3. Plagiarism Today
    • a blog that focuses on copyright issues within today’s perspective – answering questions such as “Is Disney really recreating their movies just to extend copyright?”
  4. ScienceDaily
    • a research news site that, despite it’s name, covers a wide range of topics including the social sciences and news regarding current research
  5. Arts and Letters Daily
    • A humanities and social sciences site that focuses on debates, ideas, and books
  6. Times Higher Education
    • Higher education news, including news of the day regarding politics, and higher education research
  7. The Chronicle of Higher Education
    • Higher education  news, including a deeper look at what is happening on campuses with regards to issues such as, for example, student success
  8. Constitutionally Speaking
    • Constitutional Law expert Pierre de Vos’s blogs in which he analyses recent news and events in light of the SA Constitution

There are plenty more sites out there of course – if you are into literature you also have the New York Review of Books, the Paris Review, the  Los Angeles Review of Books and the London Review of Books. Other thought provoking discussion and news sites include Aeon (tagline: a world of ideas) and Nautilus (tagline: Science Connected), while for news you have the option of a wide variety, with staples such as BBC, CNN, IOL, EWN, the Guardian and other ones perhaps new to you such as the Atlantic, The New Statesman (both UK and American), the New Republic.

My last honourary mention goes to Reddit – a forum for practically anything (tagline: the front page of the internet), letting you search for topics related to your interest. For example, the Reddit feed of Higher Education includes a number of articles from almost all the sites mentioned above, as it scrapes the internet daily to combine a news feed relating to higher education. It also includes user posts relating to higher education – such as advice for Masters students.

With all the above – we really have so much information available to keep us informed – the only thing left to do is to make sure that we don’t believe everything on the internet 🙂 Keep in mind to check for credibility (see below how), but you will see quickly the sites above pass the test.

Evaluating resources – the CRAAP test. From: https://libguides.spokanefalls.edu/c.php?g=288859&p=2711625