When writing lab reports or some form of paper, it is often your professor may require you to use a specific type of source for your report, such as a primary peer-review journal. You may be looking around confused on what these types of sources actually mean. Well lucky for you, I’m here to explain them.
A primary peer-reviewed article is a piece of literature that reports research that is done by the authors writing the paper. A key indictor of this would be the paper having a materials or methods section. An example of this would be the article Changes in vegetation in northern Alaska under scenario of climate change, 2003-2100: implication for climate feedbacks. In this paper, it can be seen the experiment is being ran by the authors as they are explaining how they facilitated it in the methods section.
A secondary peer-reviewed article is a paper that is written based on other sources. These types of sources usually do not include a methods section. An example of this would be the paper Climate change induced vegetation shifts in the palearctic region. This paper can be seen as a secondary peer-reviewed source as they are talking about other studies and providing no materials/methods section.
Finally, we have the peer-reviewed tertiary literature. This type of source is usually a combination of primary and secondary sources which rephrase or summarize their data. An example this can be textbooks such as Functional Plant ecology.
I hope this brief blogpost will aid you on finding resources for your reports!
References
http://unipub.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/1486/1/1101_079122.pdf https://www.routledge.com/Functional-Plant-Ecology/Pugnaire-Valladares/p/book/9780849374883
Applied Plant Ecology Winter 2020 