4 Reporting Scientific Work
Whether scientific research is basic science or applied science, scientists must share their findings for other researchers to expand and build upon their discoveries. Communication and collaboration within and between sub disciplines of science are key to the advancement of knowledge in science. For this reason, an important aspect of a scientist’s work is disseminating results and communicating with peers. Scientists can share results by presenting them at a scientific meeting or conference, but this approach can reach only the limited few who are present. Instead, most scientists present their results in peer-reviewed articles that are published in scientific journals.
In addition, important scientific work must be shared with people who do not read peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals. This means that scientific results must be rewritten using language that the general population understands.
Types of Sources
Whether conducting research in the social sciences, humanities (especially history), arts, or natural sciences, the ability to distinguish between primary and secondary source material is essential. Basically, this distinction illustrates the degree to which the author of a piece is removed from the actual event being described. This means whether the author is reporting information first hand (or is first to record these immediately following an event), or conveying the experiences and opinions of others—that is, second hand. In biology, the distinction would be between the person (or people) who conducted the research and someone who didn’t actually do the research, but is merely reporting on it.
Primary sources
These are contemporary accounts of an event, written by someone who experienced or witnessed the event in question. In general, these original documents (i.e., they are not about another document or account) are often diaries, letters, memoirs, journals, speeches, manuscripts, interviews, photographs, audio or video recordings, or original literary or theatrical works.
In science, a “primary source” or the “primary literature” refers to the original publication of a scientist’s new data, results, and conclusions. These articles are written for other experts in a specific scientific field.
You’ve probably done a writing assignment or other project during which you have participated in a peer review process. During this process, your project was critiqued and evaluated by people of similar competence to yourself (your peers). This gave you feedback on which to improve your work. Scientific articles typically go through a much more stringent peer review process before they are published in an academic journal. In scientific peer review, the article is reviewed (usually anonymously) by other experts in the specific field about which the paper is written. These peers are qualified individuals, often other experts in the same research area, who judge whether or not the scientist’s work is suitable