IDEA | IDEA | ||||
GREY LITERATURE? OR PRIMARY LITERATURE? | research being conducted | invisible college | |||
seminar within researcher's organization | |||||
written progress report to funding agency | |||||
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) | |||||
books (old old old stuff OR stuff that couldn't get published in a journal) | |||||
PRIMARY LITERATURE |
publication process (year) | article (or series) in conference proceedings [usu. book, primary journal, govt pub) Often only editor reviews, sometimes sooner than journal article | |||
article (or series) in scientific journals | |||||
dissertation or thesis (libraries often don't carry, many indexed in Dissertation Abstracts or other) | |||||
patent (libraries often don't carry, many indexed in Chem Abstracts or other) | |||||
final report to funding agency (libraries often don't carry, many indexed in Chem Abstracts or other) | |||||
SECONDARY LITERATURE | 0-1 month from primary lit. | current awareness services (or journals) | |||
0-9 months from primary lit. | indexing service or journal | ||||
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 | |||||
? | 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 |