Comments welcome.
Proposed Revision: ""raw data such as the untabulated results of surveys or questionnaires,written or recorded notes of laboratory and field research, experiments or observations which have not been published in a peer reviewed source , experimental results by the person(s) actually involved in the research;"
- Some sources, such as a peer reviewed article in scientific journal, may contain both primary source material (ie. the authors' original experimental results presented in a table or graph)) and secondary source material. Typically, the secondary source material will appear in the article's introduction which will contain a literature review of studies related to the subject of the stdy and in a concluding section where the authors discussion, synthesize and intepret the results of the study. Because both the presentation of data and the introduction and discussion are peer reviewed, such articles are highly valued sources WP:V.
- Reliable, published secondary sources are the most preferred sources for Wikipedia articles. Primary sources that have been published by a reliable source may also be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. For that reason, anyone—without specialist knowledge—who reads the primary source should be able to verify that the Wikipedia passage agrees with the primary source. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation.
- All interpretive claims, analyses, or synthetic claims about primary sources must be referenced to a secondary source, and must not reflect any original analysis of the primary-source material by Wikipedia editors.
This change reflects that the process of publishing results in a peer reviewed source involves (1) synthesis and analysis in theform of choosing what results should be reported and how, and in most cases involves tabulations and tables and the like representing the synthesis of the investigator, and (2) publication after peer review demonstrates both a higher degree of reliability and notability.
- I found it surprising (and potentially misleading) that peer-published experimental results are considered a primary source. IMO, peer-published that contain experimental results and also the analysis of such are clearly secondary sources. I think your change makes sense. LK (talk) 02:42, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]