The different between primary, secondary and tertiary sources is in how far from the original the information sources are based off of. In order to do a thorough research on a particular information, knowing the distinction between these three is crucial. When doing research, you will come across a wide variety of sources and not everything is credible.
Primary sources are sources that are created as close to the original information that is being documented as possible. Meaning that the person that wrote the sources, witnessed the event firsthand. In a scientific journal, any journal that the authors or writer carried out an experiment. That would be classified as a primary resource because the data and the write up would be true, first account of what they witnessed. An example of a primary resource article is the ‘Impact of the invasive rust Puccinia psidii (myrtle rust) on native Myrtaceae in natural ecosystems in Australia by Carnegie et al (2015).
Next, we will discuss secondary sources. These are sources that are based off of primary resources or research. Example of secondary article are research papers or term papers that many of our professors require for us to write, like in this class BIOL 4095. They can also be books; they are distinct because the author interprets data or research that has already been carried out. An example of an article that is considered a secondary source is ‘Nonhost resistance and nonspecific plant defenses’ written by Michèle C. Health. Where the author interpret research that already exists and is incremental on the discovery of a general bacterial elicitor of plant defenses and others of that such.
The third is a tertiary source, which are sources that are summaries of the research done by a secondary source. Examples of these would be textbooks that we have in most classes and an example of one would be Raven Biology of Plants textbook that is a Plants Biology textbook.
These sources are important to know about because different kinds of research that are required of you can require using a certain type of sources or a mixture of all the types of sources. In the sciences, for the most part, we are encouraged to utilize primary sources for research papers or any form of reference, specifically peer-reviewed ones.
References:
https://subjectguides.esc.edu/researchskillstutorial/primary
Raven Biology of Plants (8th ed.) – Evert & Eichhorn. 2012
Carnegie, A. J., Kathuria, A., Pegg, G. S., Entwistle, P., Nagel, M., & Giblin, F. R. (2015). Impact of the invasive rust Puccinia psidii (myrtle rust) on native Myrtaceae in natural ecosystems in Australia. Biological Invasions, 18(1), 127–144. doi: 10.1007/s10530-015-0996-y
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 