In an academic environment, publications are the most important formal means of communication. They are used to make research results public or to share an overview of the state-of-the-art in a research field. Publications and their citations are also used to determine researchers’ impact and, therefore, greatly influence their career opportunities. It’s important to know as a potential author how to choose the right publication type to influence it’s impact.
For students, the reason for publishing is clear: it is a requirement for graduating. Researchers usually publish because they want to advance their particular scientific field and share their research results and knowledge with others, but also because they need to in order to progress in their careers.
See Impact to find out how the numbers of publications and citations are measured and analysed.
| Type of document | Author | What and why |
|---|---|---|
| Conference posters and papers | Researchers (sometimes Master students will contribute | First research results |
| Journal articles, reviews | Researchers (sometimes Master students will contribute | Overview of the “state-of-the-art” or further research results |
| Research data | Researchers (sometimes Master students will contribute | Data linked to publications, guaranteeing the transparency of the research and the reliability of the publications |
| PhD thesis | Reseacher | Full results of a PhD project |
| (Text)book | Reseacher | Overview of a subject (aimed at students) |
| Edited volume | Reseachers | Collection of articles by different authors who approach one subject or theme from different angles |
Journal articles form the majority of scientific publications. Their format is quite fixed, because they are intended to quickly and clearly communicate information. Readers know what to expect and can easily find what the article is about, who wrote it, where the authors work and what literature was used during writing.
When publishing a journal article, you need to select a journal to submit your article to. This choice is based on:
Peer review is the review of an article by “peers” or equals: fellow researchers, who determine whether the article is good enough to be published.
Peer review is assessment by two or three fellow scientists. They give their opinions on the article in order to advise the editorial board whether the article should be published, perhaps after major or minor revision by the author.
The editorial board then decides that the article:
Many scholarly journals describe their peer review process on their websites. Sometimes, they include the proportion of submissions that are rejected. A rejection rate of 40-90% is common, so don’t take it personally, but use the feedback to improve your article.
Some journals offer an alternative to the traditional peer review process, such as an open peer review process where a submitted article is published before being reviewed and readers can add their reviews online.
In the traditional publishing model, publishers depend heavily on work performed by researchers for free: the researchers write the content of the journals, they peer review other researcher’s contributions and they work as editors. After all that work, their universities pay subscription fees to publishers to get access to the resulting journals.
From the 1990s onwards, an Open Access movement was started, which aims to make access to scientific information free for all. Universities in The Netherlands and abroad support Open Access.
Open Access publishing means that access to the information is free for readers. This has several advantages:
In an Open Access publishing model, the costs of publishing the material are paid by authors, their employers (universities) or funding agencies (organizations who fund research and research publications). Funding agencies increasingly demand that results are available as Open Access publications and they increasingly include a budget for Open Access publishing in their research grants.
There are two main versions of Open Access publishing:
If you publish in a subscription based journal, publishers may ask you to sign a copyright transfer agreement before your work will be published. Negotiate about the possibilities to put your publication in a repository or on a website. On the SHERPA/RoMEO website and/or the journal’s website you can check the copyright and self-archiving policies of a journal or publisher.
TU Delft staff and students can add their publications to the TU Delft Repository.
TU Delft requires its researchers to publish in Open Access (i.e., at least the “Green” route). For more information about the TU Delft policy, see the Guidelines in the Open Science Guide (http://openscienceguide.tudelft.nl/).
TU Delft. (n.d.). Open Science: manage your way to Open Science. Retrieved May 22, 2017, from http://openscienceguide.tudelft.nl
Why Open Research. (n.d.). Publish where you want [Image]. Retrieved May 22, 2017, from http://whyopenresearch.org/archiving