Distinguishing between primary, secondary and tertiary literary sources is an essential skill for anyone in academia and can make or break a submitted paper. Questions stemming from it may circulate in the minds of many students (including me during 1st year) circulate around “is this a firsthand knowledge/ lab report or resource?”, “Is this a review?”, “is this from a textbook or an opinion piece?”. Over the years I’ve found the general way to distinguish between these sources as follows:
Peer-Reviewed Primary sources: These are usually crated as close to the original area of study, such as a direct lab report from other scientists in the field of work. (A good shortcut would be to see if the paper includes an abstract and results section, but still scan through it as some papers can be sneaky). Works like these have to be peer reviewed before publishing in scientific journals or specific literary compilations. Unpacking multi-trophic herbivore-grass-endophyte interactions: feedbacks across different scales in vegetation responses to Soay sheep herbivory, 2018 (https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-018-1590-9)
Peer-Reviewed Secondary sources: These are generally the next step down from primary resources, these sources are typically based on the primary source, these include reviews, or journals where the authors interpret the data from the study(ies) of others; An example of this would be publishers such as The Science of Nature
Tertiary sources: generally these are the next step down from the previous, these resources tend to summarize the research found in secondary resources. An example of this would often be textbooks or reference texts such as Raven’s Biology of Plants (8th ed.) Evert & Eichhorn. 2012
References from some university libraries covering this subject:
https://www.crk.umn.edu/library/primary-secondary-and-tertiary-sources
https://library.carleton.ca/help/primary-secondary-and-tertiary-sources
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 