Source Types & Their Uses
When doing most kinds of research, you will use a variety of source types for different purposes. For example, a professor asks you to find and evaluate a Scholarly Source for a research paper on the pros and cons of harm reduction programs in the treatment of addiction in the United States. In this case, it's likely you'll be looking for a research study that presents primary data and subsequent results and conclusions.
What does this mean? How is a scholarly source different from other types of sources, like a newspaper or magazine article?
Sources can be split into several major categories, including:
- Information Content (primary v. secondary)
- Publication/Creator (e.g. scholarly sources, popular sources, trades, etc.)
Depending on the research, its creator(s), and the audience it's intended for, certain sources may work better than others. To determine the appropriateness of a source to your research, it's important to understand the differences between each type and their uses in research.
Why is it helpful to know this information?
It is essential to understand which source type will best support the purpose, evidence, and needs of your research, particulary if it's academic in nature. It is also important to keep your audience in mind. Writing a paper for a class taught by an English professor with a PhD will likely require different source types than gathering raw data sets for a Market Research Report given in a Business Seminar.
Source Types
There are three different classes of information types: primary, secondary, and tertiary, though some consider secondary and tertiary sources to be grouped together.
- Primary sources include original, unanalyzed information.
- Secondary sources include analyses or use of that original information.
- Tertiary sources are collections of secondary source information.
Primary, secondary, and tertiary sources and information are used in most kinds of academic, scientific, and business research, but examples vary within certain disciplines. For example, a primary source in the context of history research could be the text of a letter written by President John Adams to his wife, Abigail Adams, in 1799, while a primary source in the medical field would be the results of a clinical trial on the effects of harm reduction treatment on adults aged 18-24.
For examples of each type by discipline, please refer to the table below.
| Humanities | Sciences | Social Sciences | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary Sources | creative works, diaries, interviews, news footage, maps | results of experiments, research, and clinical trials | census data, statistics, results of experiments on human behavior |
| Secondary Sources | books, journal articles, reviews, criticism | books, journal articles, systematic reviews | books, journal articles, reviews |
| Tertiary Sources | textbooks, reference materials (encyclopedias, etc.), databases | textbooks, reference materials, databases | textbooks, reference materials, databases |
(Credit to the UC Merced Library, Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources LibGuide.)
(Credit to the Suffolk County Community College Library)
View the next tab in this box to see sources grouped by Publication/Creator. 
Sources may also be grouped in specific Publication Types, such as scholarly sources, popular sources, trade publications, and more!
Scholarly sources are those created BY and FOR scholars in a particular academic discipline and/or field. You may find these kinds of sources in an academic journal or from a book published by a University Press. These sources also go through a rigorous, multi-step peer-review process where fellow scholars within the same discipline read, evalaute, and provide constructive critique of paticular research to make sure its methods, evidence, and conclusions are well-developed and worthy of publication. This level of peer-review encoruages healthy scholarly debate.
By contrast, popular sources are created for a general audience by journalists, professional writers, and others. These sources are created and written to appeal to a wide swath of people, either to inform or entertain. For example, magazine and newspaper articles are considered popular sources. These types of sources are NOT necessarily peer-reviewed, and rarely include the level of citations and credibility exhibited schoalrly sources. However, they can still be useful for a variety of research needs.
Finally, trade publications are similar to scholarly sources in that they are created by and for a specific community or field, but they do NOT go through such a rigorous peer-review and publishing process. Examples of these sources would be The Hollywood Reporter, The Financial Times, and/or Library Journal.
For more information, please refer to the following table detailing the differences between each source publication type:
(Credit to University of North Carolina at Greensboro Libraries)
Access the next tab in this box to open a Machine Readable PDF version of the Comparing Scholarly versus Popular Sources Infographic.