{"concept_id":"ALTSS-DATA-002","slug":"primary-source","canonical_name":"Primary Source","aliases":["primary sources","original source"],"kind":"term","authority":"academic","facets":["EVD"],"domains":["DATA-OSINT"],"display_title":"Primary Source","search_aliases":["what is a primary source","primary vs secondary source","primary source examples finance","is a regulatory filing a primary source","is a press release a primary source"],"one_sentence_definition":"A primary source is a record produced by a person or body with direct knowledge of the fact it records, at or near the time, as opposed to a later account that reports, interprets or repeats it.","plain_english":"A pension board's minutes recording a commitment vote are a primary source for that vote. A news article about the vote is a secondary source, and a directory profile that copied the article is further removed still. \"Primary\" describes how close a record is to the fact. It does not mean accurate, official or public, and the same document can be primary for one question and secondary for another.","formal_definition":"The provenance ontology of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), PROV-O, defines a primary source as a preceding entity produced by an agent with direct experience and knowledge about the topic (property prov:hadPrimarySource). The Library of Congress describes primary sources as fundamental, authoritative, contemporary documents used to prepare later works, and secondary sources as accounts of events outside the writer's personal experience.","parent_concepts":[],"child_concepts":[],"related_concepts":["self-reported-data","osint","source-reliability","data-provenance","source-triangulation","evidence-dates"],"comparison_concepts":[],"not_the_same_as":[{"slug":"osint","distinction":"Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is defined by how information is accessed; primary describes how close a source is to the fact. A public record is an open source that is primary for the keeping body's own acts, not necessarily for facts a party alleged."},{"slug":"self-reported-data","distinction":"Self-reported describes the source's interest (the subject speaks about itself). A self-report can be primary for the subject's own acts and still be unreliable for comparative claims."},{"slug":"source-reliability","distinction":"Reliability grades how dependable a source has proven to be; primary describes how close it is to the fact. A primary source can be unreliable, and a secondary one reliable."}],"formula_ids":[],"worked_examples":[],"sections":[{"heading":"Primary, secondary and derivative","paragraphs":["Three levels are commonly distinguished:","- **Primary source**: produced by a party with direct knowledge of the fact, at or near the time. A fund's own filing, a pension plan's minutes recording a vote, a company's announcement of an appointment it made.\n- **Secondary source**: reports or interprets a primary source. A news article about the commitment, an industry study summarising filings.\n- **Derivative restatement**: repeats a primary or secondary source without independent access to the fact. Directory listings, aggregator profiles, syndicated copies and machine-generated summaries fall here. They can help locate the origin; they are not evidence on their own.","| Question | Primary source | Secondary or derivative |\n|---|---|---|\n| Did a public pension plan approve a $50 million commitment to a fund? | The plan's board or investment-committee minutes; the manager's own closing announcement naming the plan | A trade-press report citing the announcement; a database entry copied from the report |\n| What regulatory assets under management did an adviser report? | The adviser's [Form ADV](/glossary/form-adv) as filed | A league table compiled from Form ADV data |\n| Who is an endowment's chief investment officer? | The endowment's own staff page or annual report | A conference programme or directory listing the title |"]},{"heading":"The classification depends on the question","paragraphs":["A source is primary or secondary for a particular claim, not in general. The Library of Congress illustrates this with a 1946 historical study: secondary for the history it describes, primary for later historians studying how that history was written. In private markets, a manager's investor letter is a primary source for the manager's own decisions and a secondary source for the market statistics it quotes from someone else's report. An LP survey is primary evidence of what respondents said and secondary evidence of any single LP's actual allocation."]},{"heading":"Primary does not mean correct","paragraphs":["Closeness to the fact reduces transcription loss; it does not remove error or interest.","- **Interest.** A subject describing itself is a primary source for its own acts and an interested one for claims that flatter it (performance, rankings, \"largest\"). See [self-reported data](/glossary/self-reported-data).\n- **Filings are self-reported too.** A filing is made under a legal duty and in a prescribed form, which narrows what it can say. The registry that publishes it is authoritative that the filing says what it says; the truth of the content rests with the filer.\n- **Definitions travel with the source.** A figure in a filing means what the form defines it to mean, at the date the form specifies. Regulatory assets under management on Form ADV and a marketing AUM figure are different attributes, not a conflict.\n- **Timing.** The Berkeley Protocol notes that texts drafted at the time of the events they describe tend to be treated as more reliable than those produced long afterwards (para. 182)."]},{"heading":"Tracing back to the primary source","paragraphs":["Good practice is to follow each claim back through every intermediate source to the earliest reachable origin, then cite the artefact with a pinpoint (form item, page, paragraph) and keep a fixed copy. PROV-O gives vocabulary for recording the chain: an item can be quoted from a larger source (prov:wasQuotedFrom) or derived from another (prov:wasDerivedFrom), and can point to its primary source (prov:hadPrimarySource). For online material, the Berkeley Protocol recommends speaking of the \"first copy found online\" rather than the original, because an item may have circulated privately before it appeared publicly (para. 178). See [data provenance](/glossary/data-provenance), which covers the evidence chain and source attribution."]},{"heading":"How Altss applies this (Altss methodology)","paragraphs":["In Altss's evidence model, proximity to the fact (primary, secondary, derivative) is recorded separately from the **evidence origin** of each evidence item, and neither is a **derivation status** or a **validation status**. Some combinations show why the fields are kept apart:","- A manager's press release naming an LP is a primary source for the commitment, because the manager is a party to it. Relative to the LP as subject, its origin is OSINT_SOURCED: a publicly accessible statement by someone other than the subject.\n- A Form ADV retrieved from the filing system of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is primary for what the adviser reported and has origin REGULATORY_PUBLIC_RECORD.\n- A plan's board minutes are primary for the vote and have origin OFFICIAL_INSTITUTIONAL.","A value read directly from any of these is OBSERVED; a value computed from it is DERIVED and takes the origins of its inputs.","A single primary source can support a claim that a reviewer has checked and confirmed (RESEARCH_VALIDATED), but it cannot make the claim CORROBORATED, which needs at least two evidence items whose chains do not share an origin. Derivative restatements are used to find the origin and are not counted as evidence. See the [Evidence & Provenance Standard](/knowledge-center/frameworks/evidence-and-provenance-standard)."]}],"classification_rules":[],"calculation_rules":[],"common_mistakes":["Equating \"primary\" with \"true\" or with \"official\".","Treating a database or aggregator that cites a filing as if it were the filing.","Labelling a source primary in general rather than for the specific claim it supports.","Counting a press release and its syndicated copies as several primary sources.","Taking the publication date of a secondary report as the date of the underlying fact."],"edge_cases":["An interview transcript is primary for what the speaker said, but only secondary for facts the speaker learned from others.","A translation is a derivative of the original; material discrepancies are resolved against the original language.","An archived capture of the subject's own web page is still the subject's statement, as of the capture date.","An amended filing replaces an earlier one for the same reporting date. Both are primary records; the amendment is recorded as a restatement, not a second confirmation."],"external_standard_mappings":[],"source_ids":["SRC-BERKELEY-PROTOCOL","SRC-US-LOC-PRIMARY-SECONDARY-SOURCES","SRC-W3C-PROV-O-2013"],"citations":[{"source_id":"SRC-W3C-PROV-O-2013","pinpoint":"Sec. 4.2: prov:hadPrimarySource, prov:wasQuotedFrom; Sec. 4.1: prov:wasDerivedFrom","supports":"Formal definition of a primary source as produced by an agent with direct experience and knowledge; vocabulary for recording quotation and derivation","source":{"source_id":"SRC-W3C-PROV-O-2013","title":"PROV-O: The PROV Ontology","authors":"Timothy Lebo; Satya Sahoo; Deborah McGuinness (eds.)","publisher":"W3C","document_type":"standard","url":"https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/","year":2013,"publication_date":"W3C Recommendation, 30 April 2013","jurisdiction":"intl","status":"Current Recommendation","last_verified":"2026-10-01"}},{"source_id":"SRC-US-LOC-PRIMARY-SECONDARY-SOURCES","pinpoint":"Primary and Secondary Sources page","supports":"General research definitions of primary and secondary sources; classification depends on the question","source":{"source_id":"SRC-US-LOC-PRIMARY-SECONDARY-SOURCES","title":"Primary and Secondary Sources - American Women: Resources from the General Collections (Research Guide)","authors":"Library of Congress","publisher":"Library of Congress","document_type":"guidance","url":"https://guides.loc.gov/c.php?amp=&g=841141&p=6642517","year":2026,"publication_date":"Research guide page, last updated 11 August 2026","jurisdiction":"US","status":"Current","last_verified":"2026-10-01"}},{"source_id":"SRC-BERKELEY-PROTOCOL","pinpoint":"Paras. 178 (provenance, first copy found online) and 182 (attenuation)","supports":"Earliest copy found is not necessarily the original; contemporaneous texts tend to be treated as more reliable","source":{"source_id":"SRC-BERKELEY-PROTOCOL","title":"Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations","authors":"OHCHR; Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law","publisher":"United Nations (OHCHR) and UC Berkeley","document_type":"guidance","url":"https://humanrights.berkeley.edu/publications/berkeley-protocol-on-digital-open-source-investigations/","year":2022,"publication_date":"HR/PUB/20/2; launched 2 December 2020; printed edition (c) 2022 United Nations","jurisdiction":"intl","status":"Current","last_verified":"2026-10-01"}}],"faq":[{"q":"Is a regulatory filing a primary source?","a":"Yes, for what the filer reported, as the form defines it, at the date the form specifies. It is not independent confirmation of facts only the filer knows."},{"q":"Is a news article ever a primary source?","a":"Yes, when the journalist witnessed the event or the question is what the publication said. For facts the article reports from a release or filing, it is secondary."}],"seo":{},"first_published":null,"last_reviewed":"2026-10-01","last_modified":"2026-10-01","content_version":"2.0.0","url":"https://altss.com/glossary/primary-source","json_url":"https://altss.com/reference/concepts/primary-source.json","title":"Primary Source","formulas":[],"sources":[{"source_id":"SRC-BERKELEY-PROTOCOL","title":"Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations","authors":"OHCHR; Human Rights Center, UC Berkeley School of Law","publisher":"United Nations (OHCHR) and UC Berkeley","document_type":"guidance","url":"https://humanrights.berkeley.edu/publications/berkeley-protocol-on-digital-open-source-investigations/","year":2022,"publication_date":"HR/PUB/20/2; launched 2 December 2020; printed edition (c) 2022 United Nations","jurisdiction":"intl","status":"Current","last_verified":"2026-10-01"},{"source_id":"SRC-US-LOC-PRIMARY-SECONDARY-SOURCES","title":"Primary and Secondary Sources - American Women: Resources from the General Collections (Research Guide)","authors":"Library of Congress","publisher":"Library of Congress","document_type":"guidance","url":"https://guides.loc.gov/c.php?amp=&g=841141&p=6642517","year":2026,"publication_date":"Research guide page, last updated 11 August 2026","jurisdiction":"US","status":"Current","last_verified":"2026-10-01"},{"source_id":"SRC-W3C-PROV-O-2013","title":"PROV-O: The PROV Ontology","authors":"Timothy Lebo; Satya Sahoo; Deborah McGuinness (eds.)","publisher":"W3C","document_type":"standard","url":"https://www.w3.org/TR/prov-o/","year":2013,"publication_date":"W3C Recommendation, 30 April 2013","jurisdiction":"intl","status":"Current Recommendation","last_verified":"2026-10-01"}]}