Many of the components below will be included in scientific academic journal articles (primary sources/original research).
Recognizing these components will aid in recognizing when you are looking at original research.
Science
| Primary Source | Secondary Source |
| DEFINITION: A document that fully describes original research written by those that conducted that original research. | DEFINITION: A document that contains commentary, interpretation, and/or analysis of original research. |
| EX: Academic journal article where researchers describe their own research and experimentation regarding enzymes in bovine liver. European Journal of Biochemistry | EX: Popular magazine blog post that comments on multiple studies regarding the impact of sleep on regulating emotions. Psychology Today |
Humanities
| Primary Source | Secondary Source |
|
DEFINITION: a document, image, or artifact that provides us with evidence about the past. (Also called a direct source.) |
DEFINITION: A document that contains commentary, interpretation, and/or analysis of a primary source(s). |
| EX: the "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King Jr, | EX: an academic journal article analyzing King's speech. |
These are sources that summarize, list, or organize ideas. Tertiary sources do not analyze or interpret primary sources. A tertiary source is the furthest removed from a primary source.
Examples include: Wikipedia, encyclopedias (may be secondary), textbooks (may be secondary), dictionaries, guidebooks, manuals.
Note: If any source is analyzing a primary source, it is secondary, not tertiary.
| Primary Sources | Secondary Sources |
|
|