Scientific journal

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In academic publishing, a scientific journal is an academic journal that deals with the natural sciences. Scientific journals further the progress of science by disseminating new research findings to the scientific community.^[1] Such journals serve as a platform for researchers, scholars, and scientists to share their latest discoveries, insights, and methodologies across a multitude of scientific disciplines.

There are thousands of scientific journals in publication, with scopes ranging from the general sciences, to highly specialized fields.^[2][3] These journals publish a variety of articles including original research, reviews, and perspectives, each serving distinct purposes in academia. The advent of electronic publishing has made scientific journals more accessible.

As of 2012^[update], there are 28,100 scientific journals being actively published,^[4] and many more that were published at in the past (see list of scientific journals). Most journals are highly specialized, although some of the oldest journals such as Science and Nature publish articles and scientific papers across a wide range of scientific fields.^[5]

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There are several types of content in scientific journals; the exact terminology and definitions vary by field and specific journal, but often include:

• Letters (also called communications, not to be confused with letters to the editor) are short descriptions of important current research findings that are usually fast-tracked for immediate publication because they are considered urgent.
• Research notes are short descriptions of current research findings that are considered less urgent or important than Letters.
• Articles are original research, usually between five and 20 pages in length and are complete descriptions of current original research findings;^[6] length varies, e.g. 80-page articles are rare in mathematics or theoretical computer science.
• Supplemental sections contain tabular data that is the result of current research and may be dozens or hundreds of pages with mostly numerical data. Some journals now only publish this data electronically on the Internet. Supplemental information also contains other voluminous material not appropriate for the main body of the article, like descriptions of routine procedures, derivations of equations, source code, non-essential data, spectra or other such miscellaneous information.
• A target article in a journal is one which argues a case, to which other authors submit a commentary or a response. There may be a final response from the author of the target article.^[7] See, for example, Alison Gopnik's article How we know our minds: The illusion of first-person knowledge of intentionality in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, (1993), which was one of a pair of "target articles" to which other responses were published in the same volume.^[8]
• Review articles do not cover original research but rather accumulate the results of many different articles on a particular topic into a coherent narrative about the state of the art in that field.^[6] They provide journal references to the original research. Reviews may be entirely narrative, or may provide quantitative summary estimates resulting from the application of meta-analytical methods.
• Perspective articles give researchers' views on research that their peers performed.^[6]
• Data papers are articles dedicated to describe datasets. This type of article is becoming more common and journals exclusively dedicated to them have been established, e.g. Scientific Data and Earth System Science Data.
• Video papers are a recent addition to scientific publications. They most often combine an online video demonstration of a new technique or protocol with a rigorous textual description.^[9][10]
• Editorial or Op-Ed are included in some scientific journals such as Science and typically are a news section where scientific developments and their relationship to social or political issues are described. These are written by science journalists or the journal editor. There may also be a section for letters to the editor. They are not generally regarded as scientific journal articles.

Many scientific journals follow the general IMRAD scheme recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Each article has several different sections, including the following:^[11]

• The title;
• Information about the author(s);
• The abstract, a one to four paragraph summary;
• The introduction, including a background, why the research was done, research on this topic that has been done before, and (possibly) a hypothesis;
• The methodology or approach (also called materials and methods), includes how the research was done, details concerning the study's sample, measures for assessment, and the procedure;
• results and discussion, which summarizes the findings or outcome, and implications of the research;
• Comments, which explains how the results answered the questions that were posed;
• Conclusion, which places the research in context and describes avenues for further exploration.
• A list of works that the author cited.

Reading an article in a scientific journal usually entails first reading the title, to see if it is related to the desired topic. If it is, the next step is to read the abstract (or summary or conclusion, if the abstract is missing), to determine if the article is worth reading.^[12]

Publishing research results is an essential part of helping science to advance.^[13] If scientists are describing experiments or calculations, they should also explain how they did them so that an independent researcher could repeat the experiment or calculation to verify the results, or so that they could evaluate whatever the research article's findings were.^[14] Each journal article becomes part of the permanent scientific record.^[15]

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Articles in scientific journals can be used in research and higher education. An essential part of a scientific article is citation of earlier work. The impact of articles and journals is often assessed by counting citations (citation impact). In a scientific research group or academic department it is usual for the content of current scientific journals to be discussed in journal clubs. Public funding bodies often require research results to be published in scientific journals. Academic credentials for promotion into academic ranks are established in large part by the number and impact of scientific articles published.

The authors of scientific articles are not journalists; typically, a graduate student or a researcher writes a paper with a professor. As such, the authors are unpaid and receive no compensation from the journal. However, their funding bodies may require them to publish in scientific journals. Active academic researchers are expected to publish their work in scientific journals. This is important for a researcher's career, because their qualifications and performance are often evaluated based on publication count (number of articles accepted to scientific journals) and publication impact (how important the journal is and how often the article is cited). This is one of the main criteria for candidates for tenured positions.

In the early 17th century, scientists wrote letters to each other, and included scientific ideas with them. By the mid-17th century, scientists began to hold meetings to share their ideas. Eventually, this led to founding organizations, such as the Royal Society (1660) and the French Academy of Sciences (1666).^[3] In 1665, the French Journal des sçavans and the English Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society began systematically publishing research results. Over a thousand periodicals, some ephemeral, were founded in the 18th century, and the number has increased since then.^[16]

The standards that a journal uses to determine publication can vary widely. Some journals, such as Nature, Science, PNAS, and Physical Review Letters, seek to publish articles that mark a fundamental breakthrough in their respective fields.^{[citation needed]} In many fields, a formal or informal hierarchy of scientific journals exists; the most prestigious journal in a field tends to be the most selective in terms of the articles it will publish, and usually will also have the highest impact factor. In some countries, journal rankings are used for funding decisions^[17] and even evaluation of individual researchers.^[18]

For scientific journals, reproducibility and replicability of results are core concepts that allow other scientists to check and reproduce the results under the same or similar conditions described in the paper or carry out under changed conditions of measurement and explain the difference in results. While reproducibility is expected, verification of reproducibility by a third party is not generally required for publication.^[19] The reproducibility of results presented in an article is therefore judged implicitly by the quality of the procedures reported and agreement with the data provided. (Some journals in the field of chemistry such as Inorganic Syntheses and Organic Syntheses require independent reproduction of the results presented as part of the review process.)

The inability of independent researchers to reproduce published results is widespread, with 70% of researchers reporting failure to reproduce another scientist's results, including more than half who report failing to reproduce their own experiments.^[20] Sources of irreproducibility vary, including publication of falsified or misrepresented data and poor detailing of procedures.^[21]

• A. Gielas & A. Fyfe, eds. "Editorship and the Editing of Scientific Journals, 1750–1950", Special Issue: Centaurus. International Journal for the History of Science and its Cultural Aspects, 2020.

• Darnton, Robert, "The Dream of a Universal Library" (review of Peter Baldwin, Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All, MIT Press, 2023, 405 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXX, no. 20 (21 December 2023), pp. 73–74. Reviewer Darnton writes: "Baldwin warns: journal publishers are gouging their customers, scholarly monographs reach a tiny audience, libraries are floundering under budget pressures, academics are pursuing careers rather than truth, and readers are not getting all the information they deserve." (p. 74.) "Most scientific research is subsidized by the federal government." Under a 2022 White House directive, "As of December 31, 2025, all agencies... must require immediate open access... The G7 leaders took a similar stand on May 14, 2023, as did the European Council on May 23. The tide is turning in favor of unrestricted access, but the countervailing forces are so complex that the future remains cloudy." (p. 73.)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Scientific journals.

• The cost of publishing in a scientific journal, some examples and recommended reading from OpenWetWare life scientists' wiki