Primary and Secondary Sources

Original scholarly information (native sources), an article, a dissertation or a report, is called a primary source (i.e. something original - primary - has been published).

A secondary source (secondhand source) points toward one or more primary sources. Tools like bibliographies and reference databases which facilitate access to primary sources are called secondary sources. A review journal presenting someone's research is also a secondary source.

Example 1

In the internationally esteemed journal Nature (Feb. 15, 2001) researchers witin the Hugo project published an article presenting the results of the project. This is an original article and consequently a primary source.

Example 2

In the magazine Ny Teknik an article about the international Hugo project was published March 7, 2001. This is a secondary source.

Example 3

In reference databases you can retrieve bibliographic information about these articles. This, i.e. bibliographic information, is a secondary source.

Informal Sources

Information needs may be met using formal as well as informal sources. Informal sources imply talks, meetings, e-mail, discussion groups etc. The advantage with informal sources is that they are the quickest way of retrieving the latest research results. The disadvantage is the difficulties in conveying exact information, graphs, charts etc. and that it requires an extensive network of contacts.

Formal Sources

As new research results are published and thus are transformed into becoming formal sources, they constitute the framework of scholarly communication. By formal sources is implied printed documents like protocols, reports, articles in journals, books, dissertations etc.

Advantages with formal sources:

• can be distributed to many
• can be checked and critically reviewed
• easy to refer to
• can contain detailed information e.g. method descriptions, graphs, charts, etc.

Disadvantages with formal sources:

• time-lag
• require access to media and databases as well as knowledge of information retrieval