On Wed, Mar 21, 2007 at 01:44:21AM +0000, Thomas Dalton wrote:
Scientific papers are primary sources.
Scientific papers are secondary sources. The experimental or observational data that the papers draw on are the primary sources.
The data is usually published in the paper, so the paper is the primary source.
This lack of agreement has come up on WP talk:Notability recently and is clear evidence that the distinction that some policies and guidelines make between primary and secondary sources is meaningless. As someone else said, this distinction is not used by scientists. I make a distinction between journal articles and review articles, but even the latter increasingly contain new research from the authors group. We should be very carefull about building anything on the distinction between primary and secondary sources. At best some of us will not understand the difference. At worst it is meaningless.
Brian.