Page 34 - Becoming Metric Wise

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Scientific Research and Communication

public at large and communication with reviewing authorities, which
may have no scientific background, or have only a background in a field
totally different from the researcher whose work or working habits are
reviewed.
As for scientific communication in journals and similar outlets, we
note that already in the 1960s Price (1963) observed an exponential
increase in scientific publications. Since then, this tendency has hardly
declined. Scientific journals communicate and document the results of
research carried out in universities and various other research institutions,
serving as an archival record of science. The first scientific journals,
Journal des Sc¸avans followed by the Philosophical Transactions, began publica-
tion in 1665. Since that time, the total number of active periodicals has
steadily increased.

2.3 A TWO-TIER PUBLICATION SYSTEM
2.3.1 Types of Publications

We provide a short glossary of types of publications
Publication: what has been published, not necessarily peer-reviewed.
Publications may involve a formal publisher or not. We define a formal
publisher as a corporate entity or scientific society that produces and distri-
butes something, such as a book or magazine, in printed or electronic form.
Edited book: A collection of chapters written by different authors,
gathered and harmonized by one or more editors; conference proceedings
are one type of edited books (Ossenblok et al., 2015).
Monograph: A book on a single topic, written by one or more authors.
Textbook or course book: A monograph written mainly for teaching
purposes.
Enlightenment literature (popular-science books): Books, often mono-
graphs, written for a general audience.
A scientific article is a text written for a scholarly audience. It can be
published in a scientific journal or as a chapter in an edited book and
may describe original research, contain theoretical considerations or an
overview of a part of the scientific literature.
A peer-reviewed article is an article of which the scientific quality has
been checked by other scientists, so-called peers, before publication.
Preprint: This notion originally referred to a text accepted for publica-
tion, but nowadays the term preprint is also used for a technical report, a
research manuscript or a working paper.