Tertiary source

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A tertiary source is an index or textual consolidation of already published primary and secondary sources [1] that does not provide additional interpretations or analysis of the sources. [2] [3] Some tertiary sources can be used as an aid to find key (seminal) sources, key terms, general common knowledge [4] and established mainstream science on a topic. The exact definition of tertiary varies by academic field.

Contents

Academic research standards generally do not accept tertiary sources such as encyclopedias as citations, [4] although survey articles are frequently cited rather than the original publication.

Overlap with secondary sources

Depending on the topic of research, a scholar may use a bibliography, dictionary, or encyclopedia as either a tertiary or a secondary source. [1] This causes some difficulty in defining many sources as either one type or the other.

In some academic disciplines, the differentiation between a secondary and tertiary source is relative. [1] [3]

In the United Nations International Scientific Information System (UNISIST) model, a secondary source is a bibliography, whereas a tertiary source is a synthesis of primary sources. [5]

Types of tertiary sources

As tertiary sources, encyclopedias, dictionaries, some textbooks, [1] and compendia attempt to summarize, collect, and consolidate the source materials into an overview without adding analysis and synthesis of new conclusions.

Indexes, bibliographies, concordances, and databases are aggregates of primary and secondary sources and therefore often considered tertiary sources. They may also serve as a point of access to the full or partial text of primary and secondary sources. Almanacs, travel guides, field guides, and timelines are also examples of tertiary sources.

Wikipedia is a tertiary source. [6]

See also

Related Research Articles

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to education:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Citation</span> Reference to a source

A citation is a reference to a source. More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression embedded in the body of an intellectual work that denotes an entry in the bibliographic references section of the work for the purpose of acknowledging the relevance of the works of others to the topic of discussion at the spot where the citation appears.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Primary source</span> Original source of information created at the time under study

In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions can be used in library science and other areas of scholarship, although different fields have somewhat different definitions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliography</span> Organized listing of books and the systematic description of them as objects

Bibliography, as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology. English author and bibliographer John Carter describes bibliography as a word having two senses: one, a list of books for further study or of works consulted by an author ; the other one, applicable for collectors, is "the study of books as physical objects" and "the systematic description of books as objects".

MEDLINE is a bibliographic database of life sciences and biomedical information. It includes bibliographic information for articles from academic journals covering medicine, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, and health care. MEDLINE also covers much of the literature in biology and biochemistry, as well as fields such as molecular evolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Glossary of library and information science</span>

This page is a glossary of library and information science.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Academic publishing</span> Subfield of publishing distributing academic research and scholarship

Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally published but merely printed up or posted on the Internet is often called "grey literature". Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scientific literature</span> Literary genre

Scientific literature encompasses a vast body of academic papers that spans various disciplines within the natural and social sciences. It primarily consists of academic papers that present original empirical research and theoretical contributions. These papers serve as essential sources of knowledge and are commonly referred to simply as “the literature” within specific research fields.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bibliometrics</span> Statistical analysis of written publications

Bibliometrics is the application of statistical methods to the study of bibliographic data, especially in scientific and library and information science contexts, and is closely associated with scientometrics to the point that both fields largely overlap.

<i>Nature Materials</i> Academic journal

Nature Materials is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Nature Portfolio. It was launched in September 2002. Vincent Dusastre is the launching and current chief editor.

A source text is a text from which information or ideas are derived. In translation, a source text is the original text that is to be translated into another language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Recorded history</span> History based on a written record

Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world history, recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BC, and it coincides with the invention of writing.

Cambridge Scientific Abstracts was a division of Cambridge Information Group and provider of online databases, based in Bethesda, Maryland, before merging with ProQuest of Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 2007. CSA hosted databases of abstracts and developed taxonomic indexing of scholarly articles. These databases were hosted on the CSA Illumina platform and were available alongside add-on products like CSA Illustrata. The company produced numerous bibliographic databases in different fields of the arts and humanities, natural and social sciences, and technology. Thus, coverage included materials science, environmental sciences and pollution management, biological sciences, aquatic sciences and fisheries, biotechnology, engineering, computer science, sociology, linguistics, and other areas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Review article</span> Summary of the understanding on a topic

A review article is an article that summarizes the current state of understanding on a topic within a certain discipline. A review article is generally considered a secondary source since it may analyze and discuss the method and conclusions in previously published studies. It resembles a survey article or, in news publishing, overview article, which also surveys and summarizes previously published primary and secondary sources, instead of reporting new facts and results. Survey articles are however considered tertiary sources, since they do not provide additional analysis and synthesis of new conclusions. A review of such sources is often referred to as a tertiary review.

The UNISIST model of information dissemination was proposed in 1971 by the United Nations. UNISIST is a model of the social system of communication, which consists of knowledge producers, intermediaries, and users. These groups of people are different kinds of professionals. The social system also contains institutes such as research institutes, publishers, and libraries. The actors and institutions perform information services such as writing, publishing, storing and retrieving documents and information. The actors are communicating in both formal and informal ways and they are producing different kinds of documents such as journal articles, books, book reviews, proceedings, bibliographies and catalogues, dictionaries, handbooks, encyclopedias and review articles.

Source literature is a kind of information source. It might, for example, be cited and used as sources in academic writings, and then called the literature on the subject.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Data</span> Units of information

In common usage, data is a collection of discrete or continuous values that convey information, describing the quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted formally. A datum is an individual value in a collection of data. Data are usually organized into structures such as tables that provide additional context and meaning, and may themselves be used as data in larger structures. Data may be used as variables in a computational process. Data may represent abstract ideas or concrete measurements. Data are commonly used in scientific research, economics, and virtually every other form of human organizational activity. Examples of data sets include price indices, unemployment rates, literacy rates, and census data. In this context, data represent the raw facts and figures from which useful information can be extracted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Secondary source</span> Document that discusses information originally presented elsewhere

In scholarship, a secondary source is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. 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 pathfinder is a bibliography created to help begin research in a particular topic or subject area. Pathfinders are also called subject guides, topic guides, research guides, libguides, information portals, resource lists or study guides. Pathfinders produced by the Library of Congress are known as "tracer bullets". What is special about a pathfinder is that it only refers to the information in a specific location, i.e. the shelves of a local library.

Historical sources encompass "every kind of evidence that human beings have left of their past activities — the written word and spoken word, the shape of the landscape and the material artefact, the fine arts as well as photography and film."

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Archived 2013-07-03 at the Wayback Machine ". University Libraries, University of Maryland. Retrieve 07/26/2013
  2. "Tertiary Information Sources". Old Dominion University -- ODU Libraries. September 2012. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
  3. 1 2 "Tertiary sources Archived 2014-11-06 at the Wayback Machine ". James Cook University.
  4. 1 2 "Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Resources". University of New Haven.
  5. Søndergaard, T. F.; Andersen, J.; Hjørland, B. (2003). "Documents and the communication of scientific and scholarly information: Revising and updating the UNISIST model". Journal of Documentation. 59 (3): 278. doi:10.1108/00220410310472509. S2CID   14697793.
  6. "Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Sources". University of Minnesota Crookston . Retrieved 19 April 2023.