On Thu, Dec 4, 2008 at 11:47 PM, Delirium <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
phoebe ayers wrote:
Maybe we need to put more emphasis on
"encyclopedia as a tertiary
source" -- let other people do the summarizing and the vetting and
sorting out of what ideas are going to stick around for the long-term,
and focus away from citing original research directly, which helps
side-step the danger of representing obscure or untested theory as
canonical truth. This might be particularly be true for new scientific
discoveries or new ideas in the humanities. (Different perhaps for
events in the news, articles about pop culture, etc).
That's generally what I try to do, at least in cases where high-quality
summary sources are already available. IMO, if there are well-regarded
survey articles, specialist encyclopedias, etc., on a subject, then it's
verging on original research to directly cite even secondary sources
(e.g. journal articles with original research) to develop a new summary
view. I only really resort to citing secondary sources directly on a
pragmatic basis if: 1) no good tertiary sources already exist; and 2)
the material is either not likely to be controversial, or I've checked
that it's corroborated by multiple independent sources.
One of the problems with working from tertiary sources, especially
other encyclopedias, is that very often all that can be done is to
rewrite what they have said, and even that can verge on plagiarism if
not done properly. Citing stuff to the Encyclopedia Britannica
(compare citing the current edition to citing the 1911 edition), for
instance, or citing stuff to the Dictionary of National Biography.
The ideal is a mix of lots of tertiary and secondary sources. We need
to use multiple and independent sources to avoid over-representing or
copying a single source (in the sense of 'light rewriting' or 'close
paraphrasing'), and to produce something that is distinct and
different from that single source. Just tertiary sources alone is not
really producing a proper encyclopedic article, and using only
secondary sources is not great either. If the secondary source used by
another encyclopedia can be accessed and confirmed, then that should
also be cited in our article.
This "looking up the sources of the sources" is a problem with some
tertiary sources that don't cite their sources. It is also a problem
with obscure articles that don't have much written about them out
there, so when we summarise here, we are not really adding much value
in terms of aggregating different sources, but more repeating what
someone else has done.
But re-reading what the three of us have written here, I think we are
using slightly different senses of primary, secondary and tertiary.
Journal articles are, in many senses, primary sources. I think the
confusion arises because you can have "secondary literature", which is
different from "secondary sources".
But I agree entirely, that in any area where there is controversy or
doubt, defer to the best and most authoritative sources that give an
overview of an area, a summary, a text that surveys the literature and
does the work for us of giving due weight in at least a reasonably
objective fashion. This is usually, but not always, the most recent
such publication, though sometimes years of research and publications
take place before a new overview text emerges.
Carcharoth