4 ms·
My college professors said that an encyclopedia article can't be cited because it's a tertiary source of information. That's considered too far abstracted from
by manifoldgeo 3y ago
My college professors said that an encyclopedia article can't be cited because it's a tertiary source of information. That's considered too far abstracted from the original source of the info to be used as a citation. Primary sources are original documents like the U.S. Constitution; secondary sources are books about the U.S. Constitution that offer some kind of analysis by professionals; tertiary sources are aggregate articles citing multiple analyses, aggregating them together like a Reader's Digest but not contributing further to the discussion like a viewpoint or stance or new info.
All of the above is explained in this article[1] (I just lazily searched for one).
Sources:
1: https://crk.umn.edu/library/primary-secondary-and-tertiary-sources https://crk.umn.edu/library/primary-secondary-and-tertiary-s...
- schoen 3y agoConversely, Wikipedia policies ask article editors to use only secondary and tertiary sources when writing the encyclopedia (related to the "no original research" policy).