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A reliable source is one that presents a well-reasoned theory or argument supported by strong evidence. Reliable sources include scholarly, peer-reviewed articles or books written by researchers for students and researchers, which can be found in academic databases and search engines like JSTOR and Google Scholar.
This page in a nutshell: Cite reviews, don't write them. Appropriate sources for discussing the natural sciences include comprehensive reviews in independent, reliable published sources, such as recent peer reviewed articles in reputable scientific journals, statements and reports from reputable expert bodies, widely recognized standard textbooks written by experts in a field, or standard ...
Most scientific and scholarly journals, and many academic and scholarly books, though not all, are based on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify texts for publication. Peer review quality and selectivity standards vary greatly from journal to journal, publisher to publisher, and field to field.
Scholarly sources and high-quality non-scholarly sources are generally better than news reports for academic topics (see § Scholarship, above). Press releases from organizations or journals are often used by newspapers with minimal change; such sources are churnalism and should not be treated differently than the underlying press release.
Sources that are reliable for some material are not reliable for other material. For instance, otherwise unreliable self-published sources are usually acceptable to support uncontroversial information about the source's author. You should always try to use the best possible source, particularly when writing about living people.
A primary source was a source that was created at about the same time as the event, regardless of the source's contents. So while a dictionary is an example of a tertiary source, an ancient dictionary is actually a primary source—for the meanings of words in the ancient world.
Secondary sources comprise review articles that summarize the results of published studies to underscore progress and new research directions, as well as books that tackle extensive projects or comprehensive arguments, including article compilations. Tertiary sources encompass encyclopedias and similar works designed for widespread public ...
The primary source is not used to prove the fact, but to illustrate the proof of the fact with the unique voice of that era. This ensures that your use of the primary source is not original research or original research by synthesis: The weighting is derived from a scholarly source; The fact is derived from a scholarly source