Structure of Scholarly Communication

A strategy that can be used to tackle a new, unfamiliar 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 information 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 about the research authored by the person(s) who did the work is a type of primary source. (See Primary, Secondary, Tertiary Literature for deeper information.)
• 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 with comments about the original primary source research project is called a secondary source.
• 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.

A research article is NOT exactly the same thing as a primary source. An article about a research project authored by the person(s) who did the project is one type of primary source. But your professor may have an assignment that asks you to find a research article in which the professor also refers to the research article as a primary source. This is not incorrect. In order to avoid confusion, the librarian wants students to understand the differences in the definitions.

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. 

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

You can use your knowledge about the structure of scientific 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 all of these types of sources to find other original primary sources where researchers tell you their own thoughts about their own research ideas and how they performed their own research projects.

Tertiary Literature > Secondary Literature > Primary Literature

 Gray Literature > Primary Literature