The Difference Between Peer-reviewed, Secondary and Tertiary Literature

By:Areeba Tahreem

Peer-reviewed primary scientific literature reports on an empirical research study conducted by the authors and undergoes the process of peer-review. Peer review is usually done by other researchers who are familiar with the topic. It is designed to assess the validity, quality and often the originality of articles for publication. As well as to maintain the integrity of science by filtering out invalid or poor quality articles. It is not a process for detecting fraud but a way of ensuring that scientists are reading quality work from other researchers. Peer review thus lends credence and authority to a publication. The peer-reviewed primary scientific literature titled “Climate-associated phenological advances in bee pollinators and bee-pollinated plants” has the characteristics of peer-reviewed primary literature. 

1. Research question: Has the phenology of bees and the bee-pollinated plants changed as a result of climate change? 
2. Identifies a research population: the phenology of 10 bee species from northeastern North America that emerge in early spring was selected for study because spring-active taxa are known to be good indicators of response to climate change, and all 10 species are generalists that visit a wide range of spring-blooming flowers. 
3. Describes a specific research method: We conducted a joint analysis of all bee species combined by using the R package name (46). This analysis used collection day as an outcome variable and the collection year, sex, longitude, latitude, and the interactions between collection year and sex as predictors
4. Tests or measures something: To evaluate the rate of change in bee phenology over time, the researchers used a general linear mixed model with the day of the year that the specimen was collected as the outcome, year, latitude, and bee sex as predictors, and bee species as a random factor.
5. Structured in a standard format called IMRAD: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. 

In contrast, the secondary scientific literature is when scientists integrate, condense or summarize results from primary literature into review articles or books. They are extremely useful in providing a broad overview of a field and usually provide more background information and less technical methodology. They usually have no abstract and the data, figures or images are taken from other sources. Simply said it reports on an empirical research study conducted by other authors and uses their findings to prove a point or use it as evidence for a hypothesis. The secondary scientific literature titled “Plants and climate change: complexities and surprises” has the characteristics of a secondary scientific literature. 

1. Aims to provide evidence for a claim: Examine plant–climate interactions on more sophisticated levels than before. These analyses have revealed major differences in plant response among groups and have also exposed unexpected mismatches between theory, experimental, and observational studies.
2. Use numerous other primary scientific sources to provide evidence for its claims, use their findings, and data as supporting details, and do not conduct an experiment itself. 
3. Provides extremely detailed background information about the relationship between climate change and its impacts on plants. 

Similarly, tertiary scientific literature presents summaries or condensed versions of materials usually with references to primary or secondary sources. Like secondary literature, it uses other resources as references and is not written in a similar format as primary scientific literature. But a major difference between secondary and tertiary literature is that it does not analyze, interpret, or draw conclusions from a primary source but rather sources that index, organize, or compile other sources. As a result, it can be a good place to look up facts or get a general overview of a subject. An example of it would be “Plant Disturbance Ecology”, a textbook. It has chapters discussing varying topics to educate the readers and uses numerous primary and secondary sources to provide information.