As a college undergraduate, it is important to learn the difference between primary and secondary articles. Depending on the information needed and the depth of a researched topic, being able to identify a primary source from a secondary source is very beneficial.

A primary, or research, article is a publication from a scientist who reports on their original research. Some key components of a primary article include an abstract that will have verbiage that makes a reader infer that it is the writer’s own work. Phrases like: we analyzed,  we measured, or we investigated are easy to tell that the writers were the ones performing the research topic. The most important tell for a primary article is the methods portion. In this section, the procedure will be very detailed so that other scientists are able to repeat the study if they wish. In the report the statistics will be included and not summarized unlike a reviewed article would be. Finally, there will be references and peer-reviewed journals to show that other scientists approved of the study before it was published.

The peer-review process is the steps an article goes through before being published to ensure its research is valid and reliable for the study being reported. This process is when the article is reviewed by a group of other scientists and experimentalists that are typically “peers” in the same research field. When reviewing articles the peers ask questions to make sure the information is logical, relevant, thorough, and reasonable for the report made. Once enough peers approve the article it can then go forward to an editor that will give corrections to the literature of the article. More times than not, a report will have to be revised and revisited to get approved by the peers, making sure that the article is the best possible report of the information discovered, this way it can be used as reliable evidence in a secondary research article.

 A secondary, or review, article is an article that takes information from one or a few primary research reports and summarizes it. It is typical for the statistics and quantitative data to not as in depth in a review article to the extent that a primary source reports it.  Most secondary articles are less scientific and are easier for the reader to digest. They summarize which makes it easier to find out the conclusion of the primaries experiment. These articles always reference the primary source that they are taken from so that the reader can view the primary article if desired.

When looking at the two articles I was able to conclude that the Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus was the primary article for a few reasons. First of all, the article’s bolded introduction included the word “we” claiming that they were the ones conducting the experiment and drew the conclusions; unlike the Bat Coronaviruses in China article that claimed they wanted to “summarize the current knowledge” in their abstract. When comparing this article to the Bat Coronaviruses in China article it was easy to see the difference in the amount of data or statistics reported. The Bat Coronaviruses in China was an overview of information that scientists already know about and the word usage was easy to understand. This pointed to the Bat Coronaviruses in China being the reviewed article since the information was more synthesized. Another give away for the Bat Coronaviruses in China article being the reviewed article was that it referenced the Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus article in its reference section in the report.

Although there are differences in primary and review articles, they are both great ways to learn about a research topic. Depending on the information and study you are trying to perform, knowing the differences between them will make a students’ personal research more effective.

References

Fan, Yi, et al. “Bat Coronaviruses in China.” Viruses, vol. 11, no. 3, 2019, p. 210., doi:10.3390/v11030210.

“Tutorial: Scholarly Literature Types: Scholarly Literature Types.” LibGuides, 2020, guides.library.cornell.edu/c.php?g=293669.

Yang, Xing-Lou, et al. “Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus.” Journal of Virology, vol. 90, no. 6, 2015, pp. 3253–3256., doi:10.1128/jvi.02582-15.