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Primary and secondary sources

5-minute workshop

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What is primary literature?

  • The 1st (primary) place where the research was published
  • In researchers words, not summarized
  • Article in a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal
    • e.g. Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Ecology

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What is secondary literature?

  • Usually a scholarly review or book
  • Authors analyze and summarize existing research that has already been published
  • Often focus on a general topic and pull together all relevant studies to review the state of knowledge
  • Does not include original reserach

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Read the following paragraph and determine if it is primary or secondary literature

From Walsh et al. 2005:

Only a handful of studies have reported on the degree to which stream metabolism varied with catchment urbanization (Paul 1999, Meyer et al. 2005). Neither gross primary production (GPP), community respiration (CR), nor net ecosystem metabolism were associated with urbanization in Piedmont streams draining Atlanta (Meyer et al. 2005), and a similar result was reported from headwater urban streams from the same region (Gibson 2004). However, in a large river in suburban Atlanta, regulation of water withdrawals and the proportion of discharge as wastewater effluent appeared to control GPP and CR (Gibson 2004). Further research is required to test if a similar lack of trend is observed in streams where algal biomass increases with increasing urbanization (e.g., Taylor et al. 2004). In such streams, there is evidence of a shift of the dominant microbial pathways for carbon and nutrient processes from diverse sources to one dominated more by algal carbon (Harbott and Grace 2005).

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How might you reference Walsh et al. (2005) in a paper you are writing? Briefly construct one or two sentences that would cite this reference.

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“Neither gross primary production (GPP), community respiration (CR), nor net ecosystem metabolism were associated with urbanization in Piedmont streams draining Atlanta (Meyer et al. 2005).”��If you wanted to cite Meyer et al. 2005 in a paper, what would be your next steps?