Periodical papers, patent documents, scientific reports, conference proceedings and dissertations belong to primary documents
Contents, indexes and abstracts belong to secondary documents
Reviews and comments belong to tertiary documents
According to the contents, nature and processing of documents, documents can be divided into primary documents, secondary documents and tertiary documents. A primary document refers to the author himself. Such as periodical papers, research reports, patent specifications, conference papers, etc. Secondary documents are a kind of retrieval tools such as bibliographies, bibliographies, introductions and abstracts, etc. Tertiary documents are documents compiled by comprehensive analysis on the basis of primary and secondary documents, which are often referred to as the achievements of "information research", such as reviews, special reviews and annual summaries of disciplines. There are also cases where information is divided into primary information, secondary information and tertiary information.
primary document
refers to a document created or written by the author based on his own research results, regardless of whether he refers to or quotes other people's works when creating, and regardless of the material form in which the document appears. They are all primary documents. Most articles published in journals and papers published in scientific and technological conferences are primary documents.
Secondary document
refers to the products obtained by literature workers after processing, refining and compressing a primary document. It is a tool document edited, published and accumulated for the convenience of management and utilization of primary documents. Search reference books and online search engines are typical secondary documents.
Tertiary document: it refers to the product of extensive and in-depth analysis and research on relevant primary documents and secondary documents, such as encyclopedia, Dictionaries, etc.
Some researchers add zero-order documents to the above classification, which refer to original documents without any processing, such as experimental records, manuscripts, original audio recordings, original video recordings, conversation record, etc. Zero-order documents play an important role in the preservation of original documents, the verification of original data, and the verification of original ideas (owners).