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START YOUR RESEARCH

Find your resource

What is considered a resource?

Resources are anything you find to its information for your project. These can be your typical books and websites. But, it can also include journals, eBooks, dictionaries, publications, videos, images and sounds. 

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Primary Sources

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are original materials on which other research is based, including:

  • original written works – poems, diaries, court records, interviews, surveys, and original research/fieldwork, and

  • research published in scholarly/academic journals.

Secondary Sources

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are those that describe or analyze primary sources, including:

  • reference materials – dictionaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, and

  • books and articles that interpret, review, or synthesize original research/fieldwork.

Tertiary Sources

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are those used to organize and locate secondary and primary sources.

  • Indexes – provide citations that fully identify a work with information such as author, titles of a book, article, and/or journal, publisher and publication date, volume and issue number and page numbers.

  • Abstracts – summarize the primary or secondary sources,

  • Databases – are online indexes that usually include abstracts for each primary or secondary resource, and may also include a digital copy of the resource.

Which one should I choose?

Scholarly Journal

  • Reports original research or experimentation

  • Articles written by an expert in the field for other experts in the field

  • Articles use specialized jargon of the discipline

  • Articles undergo peer review process before acceptance for publication in order to assure creative content

  • Authors of articles always cite their sources in the form of footnotes or bibliographies

Examples:

Journal of Asian Studies

Psychophysiology

Social Research

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A note about "peer review." Peer review insures that the research reported in a journal's article is sound and of high quality. Sometimes the term "refereed" is used instead of peer review.

Trade Journal

  • Discusses practical information in industry

  • Contains news, product information, advertising, and trade articles

  • Contains information on current trends in technology

  • Articles usually written by experts in the field for other experts in the field

  • Articles use specialized jargon of the discipline

  • Useful to people in the trade field and to people seeking orientation to a vocation

Examples:

Advertising Age

Independent Banker

People Management

General Interest Magazines

  • Provides information in a general manner to a broad audience

  • Articles generally written by a member of the editorial staff or a freelance writer

  • Language of articles geared to any educated audience, no subject expertise assumed

  • Articles are often heavily illustrated, generally with photographs

  • No peer review process

  • Sources are sometimes cited, but more often there are no footnotes or bibliography

Examples:

Newsweek

Popular Science

Psychology Today

Popular Magazine

  • Articles are short and written in simple language with little depth to the content of these articles

  • The purpose is generally to entertain, not necessarily inform

  • Information published in popular magazines is often second-or third-hand

  • The original source of information contained in articles is obscure

  • Articles are written by staff members or freelance writers

Examples:

People

Rolling Stone

Working Woman

https://libguides.merrimack.edu/research_help/Sources

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