Primary Sources

In the sciences, primary source refers to articles that report on original research provided or written by the original researcher. 

In a primary source, the authors will write about research and the conclusions they made. Some key areas in the article to look for are similar to those found in a lab report, including... 

• An abstract/summary of the research about to be presented
• Author’s affiliation
• A review of other literature about the experiment
• A research problem statement, or description of what the researchers are trying to discover or determine with their research,
• Materials and equipment used in the experiment
• Methods where the author tells the reader what they did, how they did it, and why,
• Results where the author explains the outcomes of their research 
• Discussion of the results
• Conclusion
• References/Bibliography

The bolded elements must be present for the article to be considered primary. If an article does not include these sections is most likely a secondary source. 

Sources, 1, 2, 3, 4

Try a keyword search in the library catalogue combining your subject with words that identify a particular genre:

• technical reports, diary/ies, journals, lab books
• papers, proceedings
• patents
• studies, results