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[[File:donfelipe.jpg|thumb|360px|right|From a letter of Philip II, King of Spain, 16th century]]

In [[Academic writing|scholarly writing]], an important objective of classifying sources is to determine their independence and reliability.<ref name=Kragh/> In contexts such as historical writing, it is almost always advisable to use primary sources and that "if none are available, it is only with great caution that [the [[author]] may proceed to make use of secondary sources."<ref name=Cipolla>{{Cite book|last=Cipolla|first=Carlo M.|title=Between Two Cultures:An Introduction to Economic History|page=27|publisher=W. W. Norton & Co.|year=1992|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GIqRTlepwmoC&q=cipolla|isbn=978-0-393-30816-7}}</ref> Sreedharan believes that primary sources have the most direct connection to the past and that they "speak for themselves" in ways that cannot be captured through the filter of secondary sources.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Sreedharan|first=E.|title=A Textbook of Historiography, 500 B.C. to A.D. 2000|year=2004|publisher=Orient Longman|isbn=81-250-2657-6|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AIGq85RVvdoC&q=historiography+%22primary+source%22+%22secondary+source%22&pg=PA302|page=302|quote=[I]t is through the primary sources that the past indisputably imposes its reality on the historian. That this imposition is basic in any understanding of the past is clear from the rules that documents should not be altered, or that any material damaging to a historian's argument or purpose should not be left out or suppressed. These rules mean that the sources or texts of the past have integrity and that they do indeed 'speak for themselves', and that they are necessary constraints through which past reality imposes itself on the historian.}}</ref>

===Other fields===

In scholarly writing, the objective of classifying sources is to determine the independence and reliability of sources.<ref name=Kragh/> Though the terms ''primary source'' and ''secondary source'' have often been used when discussing ideas and matters related to [[historiography]], it can also be applied to many other fields. For example, these ideas may be used to trace the history of scientific theories, literary elements, and other information that is passed from one author to another.

{{anchor|Science}}In [[scientific literature]], a primary source, or the "primary literature", is the original publication of a scientist's new data, results, and theories.<ref>Open University, [https://www.open.edu/openlearn/mod/oucontent/view.php?id=64085&section=4.1 4.1 Primary literature], ''Succeeding in postgraduate study'', Session 5, accessed 22 March 2023</ref> In [[political history]], primary sources are documents such as official reports, speeches, pamphlets, posters, or letters by participants, official election returns, and eyewitness accounts. In the [[history of ideas]] or [[intellectual history]], the main primary sources are books, [[essays]], and letters written by [[Intellectual|intellectuals]]; these intellectuals may include [[Historian|historians]] whose books and essays are therefore considered primary sources for the intellectual historian, though they are secondary sources in their own topical fields. In [[religious history]], the primary sources are [[religious texts]] and descriptions of religious [[ceremonies]] and [[rituals]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://researchguides.library.tufts.edu/content.php?pid=60919&sid=447878|title=Primary Sources – Religion|website=Research Guides at Tufts University|date=26 August 2014|access-date=15 January 2014}}</ref>

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==Using primary sources==

History as an academic discipline is based on primary sources, as evaluated by the community of scholars, who report their findings in books, articles, and papers. [[Arthur Marwick]] says "Primary sources are absolutely fundamental to history."<ref name=Marwick>Marwick, Arthur. "Primary Sources: Handle with Care". In Sources and Methods for Family and Community Historians: A Handbook edited by Michael Drake and Ruth Finnegan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. {{ISBN|0-521-46580-X}}</ref> Ideally, a historian will use all available primary sources that were created by the people involved at the time being studied. In practice, some sources have been destroyed, while others are not available for research. Perhaps the only eyewitness reports of an event may be [[memoir]]smemoirs, autobiographies, or oral interviews that were taken years later. Sometimes the only evidence relating to an event or person in the distant past was written or copied decades or centuries later. Manuscripts that are sources for [[Classics|classical texts]] can be copies of documents or fragments of copies of documents. This is a common problem in [[classical studies]], where sometimes only a summary of a book or letter has survived. Potential difficulties with primary sources have the result that history is usually taught in schools using secondary sources.

Historians studying the modern period with the intention of publishing an academic article prefer to go back to available primary sources and to seek new (in other words, forgotten or lost) ones. Primary sources, whether accurate or not, offer new input into historical questions and most modern history revolves around heavy use of archives and special collections for the purpose of finding useful primary sources. A work on history is not likely to be taken seriously as a scholarship if it only cites secondary sources, as it does not indicate that original research has been done.<ref name=Handlin/>