Scientific literature: Encyclopedia II - Scientific literature - Types of scientific publications

Scientific literature - 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 authors being scientists
• 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
• 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 importance of these different components of the literature varies between disciplines and has changed over time. As of 2005, the standing of journal article publication is the highest in almost all disciplines (though journals vary very greatly in their prestige and importance) and that of working papers and World Wide Web publications is the lowest (with some important exceptions, however). The standing of book publications is highly variable.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Types of scientific publications", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki