20.2: Identifying Source Types

Before you can fully interact with a source, you need to know what type of source you’re working with. In academic research, you might need to choose between several types of sources: online and print, primary, secondary, or tertiary, and scholarly or popular. In the early stages of a project, you might just be crossing your fingers and hoping you can find anything on your topic, but as you develop your research, you will find that the specific types of sources you use matter immensely. For example, a paper that includes only primary sources might lack the wider perspective needed to convince an audience that the topic at hand is truly relevant to them; similarly, a paper that includes only secondary or tertiary sources might strike readers as cold and impersonal. Great research strikes a balance. In many ways, the differences between sources comes down to two important characteristics: accessibility and quality.

Print v. Online

In terms of accessibility, online sources are the preferred choice for many students. These sources are not bound by physical location, they can be accessed at any time—day or night--and they are easy to find again. The drawback to online sources is the inconsistency of their quality. While the same can be said of print sources to some extent (some print sources are certainly of higher quality than others), these sources generally undergo a more rigorous process to achieve publication. By contrast, the openness of the internet means that anyone with a connection and an opinion can instantly share their ideas, regardless of whether they are technically qualified to do so.

Primary v. Secondary v. Tertiary

To determine whether a source is primary, secondary, or tertiary, look at the position of the source. If the source records a text, event, or experience without interpretation, it is a primary source. If the source interprets a text, event, or experience, it is a secondary source. If the source provides an overview of information about a given text, event, or experience, it is a tertiary source. As an example, a student writing a literary analysis of Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye would use the novel as their primary source, and they might also integrate an academic article that interprets the novel as a secondary source, and an encyclopedia page that provides an overview of interpretations and reactions to the novel as a tertiary source.

• Common Types of Primary Sources: Literary works, artifacts, audio recordings, diaries, emails, interviews, letters, newspaper articles (written at the time of a specific event), original documents, photographs, speeches, works of art, websites
• Common Types of Secondary Sources: Biographical works, commentaries, dictionaries and encyclopedias, magazine and newspaper articles, textbooks, websites
• Common Types of Tertiary Sources: Almanacs, bibliographies, dictionaries and encyclopedias, directories, guidebooks, indexes, abstracts and bibliographies used to locate primary and secondary sources, textbooks, manuals

Types of Sources in Various Disciplines

  

Subject	Primary	Secondary
History	Civil War diary	Book on a Civil War battle
Literature	Novel or poem	Essay about themes in the literary work
Agriculture	Conference paper on no-till farming	Review article on the current state of no-till farming research
Physics	Einstein’s diary	Biography on Einstein

  

Which Source to Use?

To figure out which source to use, analyze your topic/working thesis to determine the types of sources that can help with support.  For example, if your topic deals with Van Gogh’s use of pale green and what it connotes in his later paintings, you will need to couple evidence from primary sources (images of the paintings themselves) with secondary sources (other scholars’ views, discussions, and logical arguments about the same topic).  If your working thesis deals with the benefits of regular exercise for older adults in their 70s-90s, you may couple evidence from primary sources (uninterpreted data from research studies, interviews with older adults or experts in the field) with secondary sources (interpretations of research studies).  In some cases, you may find that your research is mostly from secondary sources and that’s fine, depending on your topic and working thesis.  Just make sure to consider, consciously, the types of sources that can best be used to support your own ideas.

A Closer Look at Types of Secondary Sources

The table below summarizes types of secondary sources in three tiers.  All sources have their legitimate uses, but the top-tier ones are preferable for academic research.

Type	Content	How to Find Them
Peer-reviewed academic publications	Rigorous research and analysis	Academic article databases, Google Scholar, and library catalogs
Reports, articles, and books from credible non-academic sources	Well-researched and fair descriptions of an event or state of the world	Websites of relevant agencies and academic article databases
Short pieces from newspapers or credible websites	Simple reporting of events, research findings, or policy changes	Strategic Google searches or article databases, including newspapers and magazines

Become familiar with the source types so you can choose the type of source that fits your needs!

Choose books that most appropriately serve your needs. Some are scholarly and contain specific information from an expert.  Some are popular which are intended for a more general audience.   Print books and eBooks can be found by searching Butler’s library catalogs

Magazines

A magazine is a periodical intended for the general public such as Scientific American, Forbes, or National Geographic.  In other words, most magazines are popular sources. There are two classifications of magazines: general and specific.   A general magazine is a magazine that contains many subjects and many topics and is intended to appeal to a very broad range of people. A specific magazine contains only one subject, but many topics; this type of magazine has a much narrower audience than a general magazine.   Most magazines, whether general or specific, do not contain jargon (language that is specific to a particular field of study).   

Scholarly/Academic Journals

Note that while some professors prefer that you use these; others do not. Scholarly journals are periodicals that are published by universities or research institutions.  The articles are peer reviewed, which means a panel of experts reads over the articles to see if they add any new ideas about the topic. The articles are written by experts, for other experts. 

Scholarly journal articles are much longer than magazine articles as the reader needs much more proof.   A journal article usually contains an argument or conclusion and is based on original interpretation or experimentation.  In other words, the scholar has a new perspective to offer but must also respond to the scholarship that has already been published. The language contained in journal articles is often hard to understand for the layperson because the articles are written for experts.  This means the articles will use precise and field specific language (jargon).  

Trade Journals

When you search the library databases, you might come across a source that appears to be a cross between a magazine and a scholarly journal.  Most likely you have stumbled across a trade journal.  A trade journal is a periodical that is intended for a group of people in specific trade (e.g., food service workers, mechanics, dancers, etc.).  The articles are often written by experts in the field, but they tend to report information in the field rather than presenting original research (like scholarly journals do).  Trade journals often include job postings and service reviews as well as articles.  If you have a choice between an article in a trade journal and one in a magazine, the trade journal is usually the better choice.

Newspapers

Newspapers are usually published frequently, often every day.  This means the information is current.  However, most newspapers simply report information.  In other words, they do not (nor should they) argue for a position or analyze information (unless you are reading the

"Opinion" section or if it is a long form article).  If you need raw facts, a newspaper article might be the right choice.  However, if you are looking for a writer who agrees with your position, you might want to try another source. Unless, once again, you find an article from the "Opinion" section or if it is a long form article.

Educational Sources

We usually consider textbooks to be "educational sources." These sources are NOT scholarly/academic.   Textbooks usually just contain a report of information.  Although this information is usually correct and up to date, it does not delve deeply into a topic, nor does it provide new perspectives or information.  In other words, it does not forward the scholarship of the field.  Educational sources are not usually used for support in a college-level essay.  These sources are great for quick fact or background information, however.

Websites

Use websites only with your professor’s permission. Although websites are often not utilized in college-level research papers, it is to your benefit to know what they are, what their pitfalls are, and when they might actually be useful. Websites can be useful for a specific piece of information, such as a statistic, but be careful!  The major pitfall of using website research is that you have to do more work to check if the source information, author and organization are reliable.  You will need to check if the website contains updated information. You will also need to check to be certain the information cannot be changed by just any user, as is the case with Wikipedia.

Scholarly Sources v. Popular Sources

Another distinction you might be asked to make during the research process is one between popular and scholarly sources. Typically, instructors will expect students to engage with a combination of popular and scholarly sources, so you will need to feel comfortable identifying and evaluating both of these source types as you begin the research process. The chart below offers a few of the most salient differences to keep in mind as you choose between sources.

	Scholarly Sources	Popular Sources
Audience	Restricted to those with institutional access	Available to the general public
Authors	Experts in the field (faculty members, researchers, etc.); credentials easily located in articles	Journalists, freelance writers; credentials may or may not be easily located in the work
Publishers	Scholarly or professional organization	Commercial, for profit
Style	Specialized language specific to field; assumes prior knowledge about the topic; typically longer than popular works	Created for average readers short, sometimes entertaining pieces
General Characteristics	Narrow subject focus; little to no advertisement; often labeled as “journal” or “review”	Broad subject focus; contains ads/photos; sold at newsstands or bookstores

See this page for more help with categorizing sources from the Ohio State University online text, Choosing and Using Sources: A Guide to Academic Research.

Special Features of Scholarly Sources

Scholarly sources, particularly journal articles, can feel overwhelming when you first encounter them as a student. This is partially because, as indicated in the table above, they incorporate highly specific terminology and focus on complex ideas in ways that sometimes verge on inaccessible. In addition to jargon, they may also incorporate charts and statistics, which can feel difficult to interpret without prior training in the author’s field. Fortunately, scholarly articles follow a fairly standard structure that can help you to skim the text to decide whether or not a source will be helpful before committing to reading dozens of pages.

Journal articles are broken down into a few key sections, beginning with what’s known as an abstract. An abstract is a short paragraph that appears before the article itself (generally around 250 words) and summarizes the author’s goals, methods, and findings. Reading this overview, along with topic sentences and section headers, can give you a good sense of an article fairly quickly.

In addition to abstracts, journal articles include sections on purpose, methodology, limitations, and findings, along with either a Works Cited or References page (depending on the citation style) that lists all of the sources cited within the article. These last pages can be especially helpful because they can often point you toward additional high-quality sources that focus on the same topic from slightly different angles.

Exercise 20.2: Popular or Scholarly Source?

Identify whether each source below is popular or scholarly.

1. An article published on The New Yorker website
2. A TED talk given by a prominent doctor (found on YouTube)
3. An article published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology (found on ProQuest)
4. A book review on Victorian social norms published by the Oxford University Press
5. An op-ed on climate change published in The Wall Street Journal