A primary article is an article that contains original information. The article is written by the researchers who performed the study and are telling of their results. In short, primary articles are written by a researcher who is sharing his new findings and data with the research community. Primary articles usually contain new data sets and an analysis of this new data. 

            A review article is put together by an individual who did not conduct the research study, rather they are collecting information that different researchers have discovered on a particular topic and combining it. Review articles give an overview of a broader topic with the goal of giving the reader a general knowledge of the topic. 

            The scientific peer review process is a process that occurs when a researcher is attempting to get his or her article published in a scholarly journal. The purpose of the peer review process is to ensure that inaccurate information is not being published. The reviewers are experts on a topic who are sent the article by the editor of a scholarly journal. The reviewers read through the article and determine whether or not the information is valid and if it is deserving of getting published in the journal. An article that is deserving of being published contains new, relevant information that is explained by the writer. The expert reviewers then inform the editor whether or not they believe the article should be published in the journal or not. The reviewers do not have the final say in whether the article should be published or not, that is the job of the editor. 

            A review article, the peer review process, and a peer reviewed journal are three very different things. A review article, which was described in the second paragraph, is one piece of work that was put together by a researcher or a group of researchers containing information that other individuals have found and published. The peer review process, as described in the third paragraph, is one of the processes that an article must be put through in order for it to be published in a scholarly journal. This process involves the editor of the journal and experts in the field that the article is discussing. Finally, a peer reviewed journal is a collection of peer reviewed articles, which are usually put together by many different researchers or groups of researchers. The journal usually covers one broad topic with individual articles which are more specified areas of that subject.

            “Identification of a new human coronavirus” is a primary article. The article contains a “Results” section containing the new data in many different data tables that the researchers collected along with an analysis of this new data. “The epidemiology and pathogenesis of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak” is a review article. This article lists at the top, below the authors of the article, that the information was collected from four different research departments. This article also does not contain any data tables showing that it is a broad overview of the topic instead of a report of new findings.