How many pokemon are there in total?
According to Wikipedia, The Pokémon franchise revolves around **1015** fictional species of collectible monsters
Cool, but you do know that Wikipedia isn't accepted as a credible source in academia right? Is there a way to varify this with another source to give validity to it?
Yes, Wikipedia is indeed sometimes considered a credible source. However, it does have a credits page of which how or where they found the answer. According to my research, these are sensible and reliable credits. This means that there are indeed 1015 fictional species of collectible monsters in Pokémon.
I don't want to use Wikipedia as a reference. Use other references besides Wikipedia.