Primary sources: documents of direct experience; formal or informal; formal examples usually peer reviewed.

Secondary sources: organize, distil, or review primary sources. Review articles are a type of secondary source that can be very useful for understanding and finding primary sources.

Tertiary sources: discovery tools for primary and secondary sources.

How to identify where your source fits into the ecosystem:

- identify its genre (journal article, patent, review article, etc)

- identify its medium of publication (the journal title, the name of the conference, the book series, etc)

- the content of the resource itself. In particular, how far removed is it from direct observation of its subject?

For examples of primary and secondary sources, see the Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary tab.

Here is an article published in Chemical & Engineering News, a scientific magazine:

• Emma Hiolski, "Palytoxin: The danger hidden in tropical aquariums"

And here is one of the articles it cites:

• Lauren T. Murphy, Nathan P. Charlton, "Prevalence and characteristics of inhalational and dermal palytoxin exposures reported to the National Poison Data System in the U.S."

What are some key differences between them? Where do they fall in the publishing ecosystem?

If you haven't created a SciFinder login, you will need to in order to use it. This is separate from your ePass. You can use SciFinder from anywhere but must register on campus.

• Create a SciFinder login
• Connect to SciFinder

Once logged in, you have two main areas in SciFinder to search:

Explore References to find articles, reports, patents, and other documents pertaining to research.

• "as entered" and "concept": two sets of search results; choose one or both depending on your preferences/number of results.
• Analyze/Refine: use to trim down your search results using various parameters.
• Get Substances: explore specific substances included in your search results.
• Get Related: get references that cite those in your search results.
• Link to Other Sources: see if the full text is available through ChemPort (but see sidebar).
• Keep Me Posted: receive alerts of new references that match your search.

Explore Substances to find information about a substance or compound. Enter search terms or draw your molecular structure!