Scientific literature comprises scientific publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences, and within a scientific field is often abbreviated as the literature. To publish is to make content Publicly known. The term is most frequently applied to the distribution of text or images on paper or to the placing of content In Science, the term natural science refers to a naturalistic approach to the study of the Universe, which is understood as obeying rules or law of The social sciences comprise academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals including Anthropology, Communication studies Academic publishing is the process of placing the results of one's research into the literature. Academic publishing describes the subfield of Publishing which distributes academic Research and Scholarship. Research is defined as Human activity based on Intellectual application in the investigation of Matter. Scientific research on original work initially published in scientific journals is called primary literature. Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning " Knowledge " or "knowing" is the effort to discover, and increase human understanding Research is defined as Human activity based on Intellectual application in the investigation of Matter. For a broader class of publications which include scientific journals see Academic journal. Primary source is a term used in a number of disciplines In Historiography, a primary source (also called original source) is a Document, Recording Patents and technical reports, for minor research results and engineering and design work (including computer software) can also be considered primary literature. A technical report (also scientific report) is a document that describes the process progress or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or Secondary sources include articles in review journals (which provide a synthesis of research articles on a topic to highlight advances and new lines of research), and books for large projects, broad arguments, or compilations of articles. In Library and information science, Historiography and other areas of Scholarship, a secondary source is a Document or Recording A review journal in Academic publishing is a periodical or series that is devoted to the publication of review articles that summarize the progress in some particular area or A Book is a set or collection of written printed illustrated or blank sheets made of Paper, Parchment, or other material usually fastened together Tertiary sources might include encyclopedias and similar works intended for broad public consumption. The term tertiary source is a relative term What is considered tertiary depends on what is considered primary and secondary An encyclopedia (or '''encyclopædia''') is a comprehensive written Compendium that contains Information on either all branches of Knowledge

Types of scientific publications

Scientific literature can include the following kinds of publications:

• scientific articles published in scientific journals
• patents specialized for science and technology (for example, biological patents and chemical patents)
• books wholly written by one or a small number of co-authors
• books, where each chapter is the responsibility of a different author or set of authors, though the editor may take some responsibility for ensuring consistency of style and content
• presentations at academic conferences, especially those organized by learned societies
• government reports such as a forensic investigation conducted by a government agency such as the NTSB
• scientific publications on the World Wide Web
• books, technical reports, pamphlets, and working papers issued by individual researchers or research organisations on their own initiative; these are sometimes organised into a series

The significance of these different components of the literature varies between disciplines and has changed over time. For a broader class of publications which include scientific journals see Academic journal. A patent is a set of Exclusive rights granted by a State to an inventor or his assignee for a fixed period of time in exchange for a disclosure of an A biological patent is a Patent relating to an Invention or discovery in Biology. A chemical patent is an important source of technical and bibliographic information A Book is a set or collection of written printed illustrated or blank sheets made of Paper, Parchment, or other material usually fastened together An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created Editing Language, Images or Sound through correction condensation organization and other modifications in various media An academic conference is a conference for Researchers (not always Academics to present and Discuss their work A learned society is an Organization that exists to promote an Academic discipline or group of disciplines For the government of parliamentary systems see Executive (government. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB is an independent U The World Wide Web (commonly shortened to the Web) is a system of interlinked Hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. A technical report (also scientific report) is a document that describes the process progress or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or A pamphlet is an unbound Booklet (that is without a hard cover or binding) As of 2006, peer-reviewed journal articles remain the predominant publication type, and have the highest prestige. Year 2006 ( MMVI) was a Common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. However, journals vary enormously in their prestige and importance, and the value of a published article depends on the journal. The significance of books, also called research monographs depends on the subject. Generally books published by university presses are usually considered more prestigious than those published by commercial presses. The status of working papers and conference proceedings depends on the discipline; they are typically more important in the applied sciences. The value of publication as a preprint or scientific report on the web has in the past been low, but in some subjects, such as mathematics or high energy physics, it is now an accepted alternative. A preprint is a draft of a Scientific paper that has not yet been published in a Peer-reviewed Scientific journal. Mathematics is the body of Knowledge and Academic discipline that studies such concepts as Quantity, Structure, Space and Particle physics is a branch of Physics that studies the elementary constituents of Matter and Radiation, and the interactions between them For further information about these formats, see the corresponding article.

Preparation of an article

The actual day-to-day records of scientific information are kept in research notebooks or logbooks. These are usually kept indefinitely as the basic evidence of the work, and are often kept in duplicate, signed, notarized, and archived. The purpose is to preserve the evidence for scientific priority, and in particular for priority for obtaining patents. They have also been used in scientific disputes. Since the availability of computers, the notebooks in some data-intensive fields have been kept as database records, and appropriate software is commercially available.

The work on a project is typically published as one or more technical reports, or articles. In some fields both are used, with preliminary reports, working papers, or preprints followed by a formal article. A preprint is a draft of a Scientific paper that has not yet been published in a Peer-reviewed Scientific journal. Articles are usually prepared at the end of a project, or at the end of components of a particularly large one.

Clear communication and impact factor

Never has the game of scientific publishing been more competitive. Often, scientific advancement depends upon publishing in high-impact journals, most of which are English-language journals. Scientists with poor English writing skills are at a disadvantage when trying to publish in these journals, regardless of the quality of the scientific study itself. ^[1] Yet many international universities require publication in these high-impact journals by both their students and faculty. Part of the difficulty in publishing is attributable to a known editorial bias against studies produced in the developing world, resulting in published research that is skewed towards health issues specific to the developed world. One way to balance the international distribution of published research, is for international scientists to increase their publication rate in English-language, high-impact journals.

Authorship

The nature of the content

A scientific article has a standardized structure, which varies only slightly in different subjects. Ultimately, it is not the format that is important, but what lies behind it - the content. However, several key formatting requirements need to be met:

1. The title should be concise and indicate the contents of the article.
2. The names and affiliation of all authors are given. In the wake of some scientific misconduct cases, publishers often require that all co-authors know and agree on the content of the article. Scientific misconduct is the violation of the standard codes of scholarly conduct and ethical behavior in Professional scientific research. [1]
3. The first part is normally an abstract; this is a one-paragraphy summary of the work, and is intended to serve as a guide for determining if the articles is pertinent, and to furnish subject metadata for indexing services. An abstract is a brief summary of a research article Thesis, review conference proceeding or any in-depth analysis of a particular subject or discipline
4. The format should be archival, in the sense that libraries should be able to store and catalogue the documents and scientists years later should be able to recover any document in order to study and assess it, and there should be an established way of citing the document so that formal reference can be made to them in future scientific publication. A library is a collection of information sources resources and services and the structure in which it is housed it is organized for use and maintained by a public body an institution A citation is a reference to a source (not always the original source published or unpublished(citation needed The lack of an established archival system is one of the hurdles that World Wide Web based scientific publication has had to overcome. Reliable repositories such as arXiv or PubMed Central have been instituted, and progress is now being made on their interoperability and permanence. The arXiv ( pronounced " Archive " as if the "X" were the Greek letter Chi, χ is an Archive for electronic PubMed Central is a free digital database of full-text Scientific literature in biomedical and life sciences
5. The content should be presented in the context of previous scientific investigations, by citation of relevant documents in the existing literature, usually in a section called an "Introduction".
6. Empirical techniques, laid out in a section usually called "Materials and Methods", should be described in such a way that a subsequent scientist, with appropriate knowledge of and experience in the relevant field, should be able to repeat the observations and know whether he or she has obtained the same result. This naturally varies between subjects, and obviously does not apply to mathematics and related subjects.
7. Similarly, the results of the investigation, in a section usually called "Results", data should be presented in tabular or graphic form (image, chart, schematic, diagram or drawing). An image (from Latin imago) or picture is an artifact usually two-dimensional that has a similar appearance to some subject &mdashusually A chart or graph is a type of Information graphic, that represents tabular numeric data and/or functions. A schematic is a diagram that represents the elements of a System using abstract graphic Symbols rather than realistic pictures A diagram is a 2D geometric symbolic Representation of Information according to some Visualization technique Drawing is a Visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium These figures should be accompanied by a caption and referenced in the text of the article.
8. Interpretation of the meaning of the results is usually addressed in a "Discussion" or "Conclusion" section. The conclusions drawn should be based on previous literature and/or new empirical results, in such a way that any reader with knowledge of the field can follow the argument and confirm that the conclusions are sound. That is, acceptance of the conclusions must not depend on personal authority, rhetorical skill, or faith. An appeal to authority or argument by authority is a type of argument in Logic called a fallacy Rhetoric has had many definitions no simple definition can do it justice Faith is a Belief in the trustworthiness of an Idea. Formal usage of the word "faith" is usually reserved for concepts of Religion, as in
9. Finally, a "References" or "Literature Cited" section lists the sources cited by the authors in the format required by the journal.

Peer review

Peer review and the learned journal format are each convenient ways of ensuring that the above fundamental criteria are met, rather than being in themselves essential to scientific literature. Peer review (also known as refereeing) is the process of subjecting an author's scholarly work research or Ideas to the scrutiny of others who are

The purpose of peer review of scientific manuscripts submitted for publication in scientific journals is quality control, a term which also encompasses other means towards the same purpose. In Engineering and Manufacturing, quality control and quality engineering are involved in developing systems to ensure products or services The "quality" being referred to is the scientific quality, the lack of flaws in the data, and the validity of the conclusions drawn from the data. The lack of peer review is what makes most technical reports and World Wide Web publications unacceptable as contributions to the literature. A technical report (also scientific report) is a document that describes the process progress or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or The relatively weak peer review often applied to books and chapters in edited books means that their status is doubtful, unless an author's personal standing is so high that his or her prior career provides an effective guarantee of quality. Formal peer review is in flux and likely to change fundamentally owing to the emergence of institutional digital repositories where scholars can post their work as it is submitted to a print-based journal. Though this does not prevent peer review, it permits an unreviewed copy into general circulation.

Increasing reliance on abstracting services, especially on those available electronically, means that the effective criterion for whether a publication format forms part of the literature is whether it is covered by these services; in particular, by the specialised service for the discipline concerned such as Chemical Abstracts Service, and by the major interdisciplinary services such as those marketed by the Institute for Scientific Information. Chemical Abstracts Service ( CAS) is a division of the American Chemical Society, and produces Chemical Abstracts, and related products The Institute for Scientific Information (ISI was founded by Eugene Garfield in 1960.

Controversies

The concept of published articles is itself giving rise to controversy, especially as many journals refuse to publish colour plates for example, and if they do, they insist that authors pay the publisher. The problem arises because of the antiquated printing equipment still widely used by many publishers, and by the need for higher quality paper. Printing is a process for reproducing text and image typically with ink on Paper using a printing press Paper is thin material mainly used for writing upon printing upon or packaging In popular magazines, colour is the norm rather than the exception, as it is in computer text and articles. This is a great hindrance in many areas of research because colour photographs for example, usually provide much more information than black and white photographs. Often colour pictures are the only form which can be used to illustrate a point, such as blood smears in a forensic science article for example.

Other areas of controversy include the transfer of copyright from author to publisher, because many authors want to propagate their ideas more widely and re-use their material elsewhere without the need for permission. Copyright is a legal concept enacted by Governments, giving the creator of an original work of authorship Exclusive rights to control its distribution usually for Usually an author or authors circumvent that problem by rewriting an article and using other pictures, but enlightened publishers may also want publicity for their journal so will approve facsimile reproduction unconditionally. A facsimile (From Latin fac simile, "make like" is a copy or reproduction of an old Book, Manuscript, Map, Reproduction is the Biological process by which new individual Organisms are produced Other publishers are more resistant.

Footnotes

See also

• Academic publishing
• Acknowledgment index
• Citation index
• Open Access
• De re metallica – book cataloging the state of the art of mining, refining, and smelting metals, published in 1556
• Dream Pool Essays – extensive book written by the polymath Chinese scientist and statesman Shen Kuo by 1088 AD