A Caution Last modified 16 August 2000 You have been assigned a research paper of professional quality. Professional research papers depend upon the primary scientific literature rather than the secondary and popular literature. The reason for this pattern is that the secondary and popular literature often contain only the conclusions.
Little data is presented in the popular and secondary literature to support the conclusions.
The writing in this course should depend on data from the primary journal literature. For this reason, you should not use INFO TRAC or the Reader's Guide as a citation source. In the past few years I have noticed an increased dependence on secondary literature. Your bibliographies should NOT cite information from the secondary literature such as Time, News Week, U.S. News and World Report, New Scientist, Science News or Discover. Even Scientific American should often be avoided.