The source of scientific ecological information I have chosen is an article titled “Interactive effects of predation and climate on the distributions of marine shellfish in the Northwest Atlantic” published in the journal Oikos by the Nordic Society Oikos. The article can be found at https://doi.org/10.1111/oik.10524.
The first criteria to examine is the expertise of the authors. Most of the 18 authors were associated with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, which is a federal government agency involved in developing policies surrounding Canada’s waterways. A few of the authors are associated with different universities, either in biological departments or marine institutes. As such, the authors can be considered as experts in their field of marine ecology. The article also contains ample in-text citations linked to a References section at the bottom. Therefore, this article is academic material.
Next is the matter of peer review. In the Acknowledgement section, the authors thank two anonymous reviewers for their thorough assessment, indicating that the article has undergone a peer review process.
Finally, this paper is comprised of strictly delineated sections indicative of a field study, following the structure of abstract, introduction, methods and materials, results, and discussion. The authors conducted their own research in the hopes of increasing the accuracy of species distribution models (SDMs) in relation to changes in the climate and predators. All in all, this makes the article fall under the category of academic, peer-reviewed research material.