The present study examines the relationship of knowledge resources of the topic and their representation to the self-evaluation of content in academic writing. Factor analysis of the questionnaire data gathered from 403 non-English-major graduate students yields four types of knowledge resources and eight types of knowledge representation strategies. Data analysis shows that personal experience is the most preferred knowledge resource, and that the most frequently used strategies of knowledge representation range from subjective perspective, contrastive evidence, objective statement, paraphrasing, and comprehensive processing to evidence evaluation. Further correlation analysis indicates that content evaluation is significantly correlated to three external knowledge resources (authoritative evidence, multi- source evidence and professional knowledge) and five external knowledge representation strategies (objective statement, paraphrasing, comprehensive processing, evidence evaluation, and objective perspective).