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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. In a secondary source, the original information is selected, modified and arranged in a suitable format.
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 not necessarily independent sources. They rely on primary sources for their material, making analytic or evaluative claims about them. [f] For example, a review article that analyzes research papers in a field is a secondary source for the research. [g] Whether a source is primary or secondary depends on context. A book by ...
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]
Whether a source is primary, secondary or tertiary can depend on the topic that an article is covering. For example, the summary for policy makers from the IPCC is a secondary source for the article Global warming but it would be a primary source if used for the article Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Similarly, a book review in a ...
Availability of secondary sources covering the subject is a good test for notability. " Sources " [ 3 ] should be secondary sources , as those provide the most objective evidence of notability. There is no fixed number of sources required since sources vary in quality and depth of coverage, but multiple sources are generally expected. [ 4 ]
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 ...