Professor said any source counts as long as it's "formally published." So i cited a 1987 Soviet agricultural handbook.

This was last semester in a general research methods class. The professor was very particular about citations and spent a lot of time in the first week explaining that we were allowed to use any formally published source, meaning it had an author, a publisher, and a date. No blogs, no wikis, nothing self-published.

But formally published? Fair game, she said. Multiple times. She even said "i don't care if it's from 1950, if it was formally published it counts."

I was writing a paper on land use patterns and collective farming and i found this incredibly detailed Soviet agricultural handbook from 1987, fully published by a state agricultural institute in Moscow, author listed, everything. It was actually genuinely useful for my specific argument. I cited it properly in Chicago format, translated the title, included the original Cyrillic in brackets. Completely legitimate.

My professor handed back the paper and had left a comment saying "please use credible and accessible sources going forward." No point deduction, but the comment was clearly meant as a correction. I went to office hours and very politely pointed out that the handbook met every criteria she had outlined on day one: formal author, formal publisher, formal date. She stared at my rubric for a moment and then said "that's fair" and crossed out the comment.

She updated the syllabus the following week to include "sources should be available in English." Which, sure. But also maybe don't say any formally published source counts if you don't actualy mean it.