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This wall painting found in the Roman city of Pompeii is an example of a primary source about people in Pompeii in Roman times (portrait of Terentius Neo).. In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called an original source) is an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time ...
A secondary source is one that gives information about a primary source. In a secondary source, the original information is selected, modified and arranged in a suitable format. Secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information.
Many documents that are produced today, such as personal letters, pictures, contracts, newspapers, and medical records, would be considered valuable historical documents in the future. However most of these will be lost in the future since they are either printed on ordinary paper which has a limited lifespan, or even stored in digital formats ...
These documents or people summarize other material, usually primary source material. They are academics, journalists, and other researchers, and the papers and books they produce. This includes published accounts, published works, or published research. For example, a history book drawing upon diary and newspaper records.
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.
Whether a document is a primary or a secondary source depends not only on the document itself but also on the purpose for which it is used. For example, if a historian writes a text about slavery based on an analysis of historical documents, then the text is a secondary source on slavery and a primary source on the historian's opinion.
When the policy says that "articles should be based upon" secondary sources, the policy means that a majority of the content and the major themes for an article should be cite-able with reliable secondary sources. It doesn't mean that you can't ever cite a primary source for anything. About whether editors should prefer the primary literature:
Source document, a document in which data collected for a clinical trial is first recorded; Source text, in research (especially in the humanities), a source of information referred to by citation Primary source, a first-hand written evidence of history made at the time of the event by someone who was present