Tertiary source

Not to be confused with Tertiary sector of the economy.
For Wikipedia's policy on the use of tertiary sources, see Wikipedia:No original research#Tertiary.

A tertiary source is an index or textual consolidation of already published primary and secondary sources[1] that does not provide additional interpretations or analysis of the sources.[2][3] Some tertiary sources can be used as an aid to find key (seminal) sources, key terms, general common knowledge[4] and established mainstream science on a topic. The exact definition of tertiary varies by academic field.

Academic research standards generally do not accept tertiary sources such as encyclopedias as citations,[4] although survey articles are frequently cited rather than the original publication.

  1. ^ Primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Archived 2013-07-03 at the Wayback Machine". University Libraries, University of Maryland. Retrieve 07/26/2013
  2. ^ "Tertiary Information Sources". Old Dominion University -- ODU Libraries. September 2012. Retrieved 20 June 2013.
  3. ^ "Tertiary sources Archived 2014-11-06 at the Wayback Machine". James Cook University.
  4. ^ a b "Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary Resources". University of New Haven.