Primary vs Review Articles: Which is Which?

Kira Amidon

CRN: 21701

Dr. Janet Rinehart-Kim

            A primary article is a scientific paper written by the authors of the experiment. It usually includes an introduction, purpose of the experiment, the methods used in the experiment, the results from the trials, a discussion about what the data proves or disproves, and references for any outside information used. A primary article usually has been submitted for peer review before final publication. The only summarization in a primary article is typically in the abstract of the paper before the introduction.

            A review article is a scientific paper that summarizes the data from the primary articles. Review articles are written by authors who have read the data and summarize the findings into a digestible article that mainly consists of the conclusions and theories of the possible connections of the research to a problem. Review articles will include a link to the original article and are considered secondary articles. These are best used for finding information relevant to your topic quickly.

            The peer review process is a quality control process used to verify legitimacy of scientific papers. The document is sent to a team of scientists in the same field to be examined for errors and incontinuities. It also checks for originality in the field and determines significance of the findings. The peer review process can involve a single-blind review, where reviewers know the authors’ identity or a double-blind review where both the identity of the reviewers and the authors are unknown to eliminate bias. Then there is open peer review where critiques do not have anonymity on their review of the article.

            The primary article is “Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Bat Coronavirus Closely Related to the Direct Progenitor of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus.” The article lists only empirical data from the research of the authors. The “Bat Coronaviruses in China” article is heavily summarized and does not use first person language. It also states that it is a review and brings together data used in other studies and gives theories of how to use this data in further research.