Demand Studios Review Tip: Finding .Edu and .Gov References

By Sarah Miller, Demand Studios Review Writer

Posted On 11/2/10:

As all Demand Studios writers should know by now, the references you choose matter. It's pretty much the one thing that determines your research score. Well, that and in cite attributions (i.e. "According to _____").

Now, I don't recommend any Demand Media Studios writer take their scorecards too seriously. If you check them all the time and spend a lot of time worrying about them, you'll not only drive yourself crazy but you'll cut into your writing time.

But the fact of the matter is that they do count. If you want to continue writing for Demand Media, and you want to be approved for special assignments, you'll want your Demand Studios scorecard to be as good as possible.

Government (.gov) and education (.edu) references are considered the best. Use enough of these, and remember to cite them in your text, and you should see your research scores improve.

So, how do you find them?

The easiest way is to include "site:edu" or "site:gov" after your search term. I didn't know about this little trick until recently, and it's been a real lifesaver.

 I'm sure some of you are already using this method, but for those who aren't this should be a big help.

You don't need to include the quotation marks, but make sure there aren't any spaces on either side of the colon.

You can also find good government and education references for your Demand Studios articles by taking a look the suggested references list.

Demand Media Studios has provided this suggested reference list, and it's worth using. Just go to the writer resource center (under the "Resources" tab on your work desk) and look for the "Suggested References" link under "Guidelines & Sample Work."

I will sometimes include relevant links from .edu and .gov sites that I never used for my actual research, just to make my references look better.

My scorecard looks much better since finding out about the site:edu and site:gov trick. So remember to use it and use it often. It's well worth the little bit of extra effort.

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