Primary literature

How can I use this?

Primary sources are some of the most important documents in scientific research, and often they’re expected to form the bulk of the sources you incorporate into your research paper. Primary sources provide authoritative, first-hand research information, they are important to use in your work. You can use primary sources to provide credible evidence for your arguments and to back up specific claims.

What is it?

In science, sources that report on original research are known as Primary literature. They include:

• Conference Proceedings: It’s common for scientists to present their findings at a conference. These presentations are often written up and published in conference proceedings.

• Journal articles: Journals somewhat resemble magazines in appearance but they report on the findings of scholarly studies. Well-respected journals include articles that are evaluated by other researchers in the field (i.e. peer-reviewed or refereed). Journals can be published in print (i.e. hard copy) or on the web (also known as electronic journals or ejournals).

Secondary literature

How can I use this?

Secondary sources are useful for both gaining a broad knowledge of a topic area (e.g., review papers), and for understanding how certain discoveries or projects were received by the scholarly community. They give you opinions, analysis, and a discussion of impact which you can use to place primary sources in context. They are useful to understand the various broad aspects of your research topic.

What is it?

When other writers summarize or review the theories and results of original scientific research, their publications are known as Secondary Literature. These publication types serve to synthesize the findings to date and present the ideas to a wider audience. Examples of secondary literature include:

• Review articles
• Edited volumes
• Books summarizing research in an area
• Abstracts and Indexes – Tools used to find articles in scholarly journals

Secondary literature is not as current as the primary literature but it is often more descriptive and is useful for finding introductory material.

Tertiary Literature

How can I use this?

Tertiary sources are helpful to understand when you’re beginning research on a topic to which you have no prior exposure. You can refer to tertiary sources when you need definitions or basic information about a topic.

What is it?

Tertiary sources index, abstract, organize, compile, or digest other sources. Examples of tertiary literature include:

• Dictionaries and encyclopedias
• Handbooks and guidebooks

The video Sources, created by UBC Science Writing, explains why it matters which of these sources are used in academic writing.

Try this mini-quiz: 

Adaptations

Material in this section has been adapted from Sources by UBC Science Writing, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License and Library Research Skills for Land and Food Systems by Katherine Miller, Sally Taylor, Katherine Kalsbeek, Suzan Zagar, Megan Brown, Maggie Fabber, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, and Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources in Library Skills for 2nd Year Biology Students by Lauren Stieglitz, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

References

Grodsky, G.M. (1970). Insulin and the pancreas. Vitamins & Hormones, 28: 37-101.

Martin, E. (2010). Concise medical dictionary. Oxford University Press, Oxford, NY.