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.Information Literacy in the Health Sciences

Orientation to health resources and search strategies.

Structure of Scholarly Communication

Structure of Scholarly Communication

People talking and sitting around a desk with research papers on it

A strategy that can be used to tackle a new, unfamilar topic is to gather an overview of your topic and then drill down into the details. Get some basic context and information about your topic, such as a summary of the "5 Ws and One H" (who, what, where, when, why, how). Your first sources will probably not include all of the infomation you need so you can proceed to find other sources that fill in the missing details.

Well, where can you find these?

Knowing the typical patterns of scholarly communication of your discipline can help you find information.

When your professor does a research project, there are typical patterns that are followed.

  • When a research project is still just an idea or while working on the project, the researchers may discuss the idea or project with others by sending e-mails or posting questions or comments online.
  • As the research project is completed, the researchers look to share the results with others. Where and how this is customarily shared varies by discipline. Scientists usually publish their research as scholarly peer-reviewed journal articles. Scholars in the humanities may choose to publish as a journal article or a book. Other disciplines have other possible methods of distributing the information. The original publication is called the primary source or the primary literature.
  • After publication, other researchers and scholars read about the project. The project may raise questions in their minds. They may have comments or constructive criticism to share. The project may give them ideas that influence their own research interests. They may publish their questions and comments in scholarly journals as letters or in their own research article within the background portion. Their letter or article will cite the original source. A publication commenting on the original source is called the secondary source and secondary literature.
  • As a research project and its ideas become a known accepted part of the scholarly discipline, textbooks and encyclopedias incorporate it into their content.
  • Databases, library catalogs, and other finding aids provide methods to locate the various publications on desired topics. These are sometimes called tertiary literature.

Literature Distribution Timetable

The table below provides a diagram of the various formats and places where a research project may be shared along with an estimated time frame. Technology and electronic publishing have shortened the time needed to share some of these formats, media, or forums, but some of these sources still take time to produce and distribute.

Table adapted from  Wiggins, G. (1991). Chemical information sources. New York: McGraw-Hill. 

IDEA

 

FORMAT, MEDIA, OR FORUM

GREY LITERATURE? OR PRIMARY LITERATURE?

research being conducted

invisible college

seminar within researcher's organization

written progress report to funding agency

e-mail

electronic newsgroup

discussion list

conference lecture

laboratory notebook

research completed

rapid communication journals (short report)

letters journals (short report)

news journals (short report, weekly)

preprint

technical report

personal Web site (if before formal publication)

PRIMARY

LITERATURE

publication process (year)

article (or series) in conference proceedings [usually book,
primary journal, govt pub) Often only editor reviews it, sometimes earlier than journal article

article (or series) in scientific journals

dissertation or thesis (libraries often don't carry,
many indexed in Dissertation Abstracts or other database)

patent (libraries often don't carry,
many indexed in Chem Abstracts or other database)

final report to funding agency (libraries often don't carry, many indexed in Chem Abstracts or other)

books (some disciplines publish 50/50 in books/journals)

SECONDARY LITERATURE

0-1 month from primary lit.

current awareness services (or journals)

0-9 months from primary lit.

indexing service or database

standard interest profiles

SDI (selective dissemination of information)

3-9 months from primary lit.

abstracting service or journal

1-3 years from primary lit.

review (serial) - summary of topic, less detail, 1-2 years later (Advances in..., Progress in..., Review) within conference proceedings or special of primary journal

2-5 years from primary lit.

monographs  - one author writes chapters on new topics in science, strong editorial control, broader scope than monograph or multigraph, requires knowledge of discipline

treatise - multi volume; logical, classified order; covers entire subject field, requires knowledge of discipline

multigraphs (managed texts, composite works, multi-authored books) - experts write chapters on new topics in science, strong editorial control, requires knowledge of discipline

data compilation - data, numbers, & equations

?

symposium talk which summarizes a field

SECONDARY? OR TERTIARY?

2-5 years from primary lit.

encyclopedia - few references, broad but less detail 

handbook - data, numbers, & equations

dictionary

textbook

 ?
(hard to say
exactly)

bibliographies

citation indexes

atlases, scientific

thesauri

biographical sources

TERTIARY

LITERATURE

 7-10 years

works that are designed to teach you how to use primary and secondary works

guides to the literature

directories

lists of periodicals

buyers guides

biographical sources

 ?

compendia

full-text computer databases

review articles, sometimes

popular literature

library catalogs

 Table adapted from  Wiggins, G. (1991). Chemical information sources. New York: McGraw-Hill. 

x

Chemistry books displayed in a circle

You can use your knowledge about the structure of scholarly communication to help you find information. You can use an encyclopedia or other reference work to get an overview of a topic in a limited number of pages or words. You can use the databases, library catalogs, and other tertiary sources to find secondary sources that comment about and discuss a topic. You may use the databases.  Or use the references within the primary sources to find other original primary sources where researchers tell you their own thoughts about their own ideas and how they performed their research projects.

Tertiary Literature > Secondary Literature > Primary Literature

 Gray Literature > Primary Literature