Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A secondary source contrasts with a primary, or original, source of the information being discussed. A primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation or it may be a document created by such a person. A secondary source is one that gives information about a primary source.
A primary source can have all of these qualities, and a secondary source may have none of them. Deciding whether primary, secondary or tertiary sources are appropriate on any given occasion is a matter of good editorial judgment and common sense, not merely mindless, knee-jerk reactions to classification of a source as "primary" or "secondary".
Similarly for breaking news, a contemporary secondary news source can quickly become a historical primary source. Articles of recent current events must be periodically updated with new secondary sources. Sources of any age may be prone to recentism, and this needs to be balanced out by careful editing.
Secondary sources are accounts at least one step removed from an event or body of primary-source material and may include an interpretation, analysis, or synthetic claims about the subject. [2] Secondary sources may draw on primary sources and other secondary sources to create a general overview; or to make analytic or synthetic claims. [3] [4]
A source may be considered primary for one statement but secondary for a different one. Even a given source can contain both primary and secondary source material for one particular statement. For the purposes of this policy, primary, secondary and tertiary sources are defined as follows: [c
The line between primary and secondary sources is not always clear. In general, primary sources include descriptions of an individual experiment or a series of experiments by the same research group; secondary sources include independent review articles summarizing a line of research or rectifying apparently discordant results.
Usually, subject experts will publish in sources with greater levels of editorial control such as research journals, which should be preferred over blog entries if such sources are available. Blogs may be used in certain conditions as secondary sources on living persons; see WP:BLP.
Sources of information are commonly categorized as primary, secondary, or tertiary sources.In brief, a primary source is one close to the event with firsthand knowledge (for example, an eyewitness); a secondary source is at least one step removed (for example, a book about an event written by someone not involved in it); and a tertiary source is an encyclopaedia or textbook that provides a ...