Date: 23.04.2021

In the world of science, scientific publications are of paramount importance. They allow researchers to publish their findings and make them accessible to the scientific community and academic discourse, thus contributing to the development of science. The ultimate goal of any researcher is to publish scientific work that will actually make a difference to the scientific field or even will have an impact on the larger scientific community. When it comes to publishing, however, there is more than just one path to choose. There are several ways one can publish a scientific document and make it available to the academic world, with each having its own features and benefits. This article introduces the different forms of scientific publications to the reader and addresses its importance for both the fields of study and its authors.

The manifold forms of publications – as colorful as science itself
When it comes to publications in the world of science, the palette is quite colorful. There are many different types of scientific publications and which one you choose strictly depends on the field of study you have chosen and respectively the focus area of the research itself. Choosing the most appropriate format can maximize the chance for one’s manuscript to be accepted. Let’s take a look at some of the most common scientific types of publications available.

Monographs
Monographs are scientific publications dealing with a specific topic, most commonly in the form of a book. A monograph may be written by any number of authors. In contrast to compendiums and contributions to edited volumes and collections, the individual chapters may be written by one author or in collaboration with others. A monograph as a type of scientific research publication is different from an article in several ways, but most notably a monograph is much longer. There is probably no consensus as to length, but a range might be between 25,000 to 75,000 words, plus some images and tables in most cases. A monograph is usually a single installment and not a multi-volume or periodic series. In the past, monographs were typically published in print form but now, with the technology development, monographs are also offered as an e-book. 

Professional journals
A professional journal is a collection of articles and images about diverse topics of applied science and professional news items. Most commonly a professional journal is written by journalists or scholars and is specially designed to serve an audience interested in a very specific field of applied science. Professional journals cover practical, relevant information for professionals in the field of engineering, forestry, paper industry, education, etc. In articles in a professional journal you can typically find popularized and simplified information on scientific research or discovery, as well as up-to-date information about current events that are relative to a specific professional group. The articles can also provide you with information on some practical applications of science or illustrated reports of scientific work. Often, professional journals are published by professional organizations in these fields. However, unlike scientific journals, many of the professional journals cannot be found in ‘full text’ form online yet. 

Festschriften
The Festschrift is a scientific publication genre that has a long tradition in academia, dating back several centuries. In fact, editing a Festschrift is considered a significant academic achievement and is often an important sign of recognition in the establishment of a particular academic discipline. The term Festschrift originates from the Federal Republic of Germany and means “celebratory volume”. In academia, a Festschrift is a book that honors a respected academic person, and that is presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the honoree’s colleagues, former pupils, and friends. The term has been used in volumes not written or edited in German. Sometimes, English Festschriften se the phrase “Essays in Honor” to indicate the nature of the collection as a Festschrift. Contributions to Festschriften often include different languages, reflecting the breadth of international interaction, even though the majority of authors currently opt for English as the preferred medium of academic discourse.

Conference and meeting proceedings
A conference proceeding is basically the published record of a conference, congress, symposium, or other types of meetings sponsored by a society or association, usually but not necessarily including abstracts or reports of papers presented by the participants. Conference proceeding is a way to engage with leading-edge research before the official journal publication. Conference papers and proceedings can be published in a variety of ways, which can make them tricky to find. They may be published as a book, as a journal article, a special issue or supplement of a journal, or as part of a series. They usually include findings, innovations, best practices, or new methodologies (depending on the field). In fact, conference proceeding allows researchers to present new concepts and techniques in a field which are not fully developed. This helps other researchers to be involved and influence the direction of research at the early stages. If you are new to a field of research conference proceedings and publication, it might be good to connect with researchers, research teams or even institutions researching the same topic of interest.
Papers presented at conferences are working papers; they are not typically peer-reviewed journal articles. Many of these papers will go on to be published in peer-reviewed journals, but others will not be published at all, depending on the case. Authors may also decide to publish their conference papers on their own official website. 

What matters in scientific publishing: Quality over everything else?
When it comes to literature, making an impact is always important, and the scientific field is definitely not an exception in this respect. Over the years, the number of published scientific documents has grown a lot. Quite naturally, a recognized need for the usage of an indicator of scientific journal performance has arisen, too. 

Publications are the main way scientists publicize their work, and ultimately, it is by their papers that they will be judged. For young and ambitious researchers who are still trying to stand out in their research field, publishing best-quality research as timely as possible may turn out to be crucial for the success of their professional careers. But here comes the question of how a journal article’s impact can be measured? How can you tell if a certain published scientific document is of a high importance to its field or rather not that much? 

The Impact Factor: Class instead of mass
First introduced by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information, the impact factor is an excellent existing indicator used to measure the importance of a journal to its field. The so-called Impact Factor attempts to measure the quality of a journal in terms of its influence on the academic community, compared to other journals in the same field. You should keep in mind, however, that the Impact Factor of a journal is not associated with the factors like quality of the peer-review process and quality of the content of the journal. Rather, it is a measure that reflects the average number of citations to articles published in journals, books, thesis, project reports, newspapers, conference/seminar proceedings, documents published on the internet, in notes, and any other approved documents. As a general rule, the higher the Impact Factor, the more important and prestigious the journal within its particular field.

How to calculate an Impact Factor
There is an easy, simple formula you can use to check the Impact Factor of a journal article. You can do so by dividing the number of current citations to articles published in the two previous years by the total number of articles published in the two previous years.

Here is one example of that:
    Imagine you want to calculate the 2019 Impact Factor of a journal ‘X’. 
To do that, you need the following information:
A = the number of articles published in the previous two years – 2018 and 2017. Let’s imagine that the citations received in 2019 to articles published in journal ‘X’ in 2018 are 480, and citations received in 2019 to articles published in journal ‘X’ in 2017 are 500. Then, the total number of citations received in 2019 to articles published in 2018 and 2017 equals 480+500 = 980
B = the total number of articles published in 2018 and 2017. Let’s now imagine that hypothetically, the number of articles published in the journal ‘X’ in 2018 equals 47, while the number of articles published in 2017 is 61. All together they are 108.
The Impact Factor of journal ‘X’ = A/B =980/108 = 9.07. 

This formula creates a number that can easily be compared across journals. The higher the Impact Factor, the more esteemed the journal is seen. Journal which publishes more review articles will get maximum Impact Factor. Some journals become more attractive than others as channels through which research would be more widely noticed. As a general rule, a journal that publishes more review articles will get the highest Impact Factor. Moreover, older journals will generally receive more citations because they have larger bodies of previously published articles available to be cited. Journals with higher Impact Factors are considered more important for science than those with lower ones. According to Eugene Garfield “impact simply reflects the ability of the journals and editors to attract the best paper available”. They simply become places to be seen.
However, the number you get as an Impact Factor of a journal should not be seen as an absolute number. Instead, Impact Factor is a great tool for comparing journals within the same disciplines. Cross-discipline comparison using the Impact Factor is not valid.

Where to find journal Impact Factors: “InCites” at its best
You can always find the Impact Factor in Journal Citation Reports (JCR). A great example of a JCR online database is InCites. On InCites, which is part of the Web of Science, the Impact Factors of thousands of journals are listed. You can search for a specific journal or a group of journals by subject. By making a simple registration on the website with either a personal or university e-mail address, you can receive information about the journals you are interested in and compare their Impact Factors fast and easily. 

It is not all sunshine and rainbows: Impact Factor criticism
The Impact Factor is clearly the best-known and most widely used bibliometric indicator. As a measure of journals’ influence, the Impact Factor has several benefits for researchers as well as librarians, knowledge managers, and information professionals. First of all, as mentioned above, it is very easy to be measured and is pretty objective as a tool itself. Moreover, as a management tool for library journal collections, the Impact Factor supplies the library administrator with information about journals already in the collection and journals under consideration for acquisition. However, apart from its advantages, there is also some criticism for the Impact Factor.
The Impact Factor could be seen as an inappropriate measure because it does not consider the real quality of the research articles, its impressiveness, its uniqueness or the long-term impact of journals. It has to be noted that the Impact Factor and citation indexes measure and indicate a specific, and relatively uncertain, type of performance. It just does not give a direct measure of quality. Therefore, using the Impact Factor in order to measure the quality of individual articles or even the authors themselves, seems to be а very unsustainable method according to critics. What is more, the validity and the use of the Impact Factor as a measure of journal importance is subject to controversy and it might actually happen that another independent examination might reproduce a different Impact Factor number as a result. However, Impact Factor measures the reputation of the publishing journal, not the quality of the content in the single papers published in it. The Impact Factor only takes into account received citations in a basic quantitative manner. It is conceivable that the published papers in a journal have a greater influence on science if these papers are cited by articles with a higher scientific quality.

Another reason why the Impact Factor is criticized is because of the two-year window of time used for measuring the Impact Factor. For some scientific fields, this time frame might seem absolutely logical when they are associated with a fast-moving process of research. However, this might not be the case with other fields of study. In fact, some require a serious period for dedicated research or empirical validation and besides, it takes a very long time for review and therefore, these kinds of research might take more than two years to be completed and then published. In such cases, citation to the original papers will not be considered in the Impact Factor estimation of the publishing journal. Also, articles which were published many years ago and are still cited a lot, have a significant impact on the research area, but unfortunately, citation to these articles will not be considered due to their old age (they do not fit in this two-year window).
Although the Impact Factor is a popular measure of quality for scientific journals, that journal Impact Factor has its own restrictions. Maybe it will be better if there is more examination done on whether and how the Impact Factor evaluates journal quality before it is broadly accepted as a measure of journal quality in every field of study.

Research paper in the waiting line: Why should I publish?
Once you already have conducted your research and come up with conclusions supported by facts, it is time to think about making it available to others. After years spent on research and writing processes with the aim of producing that unique, impactful scientific document, it is not only necessary but also highly recommended to actually publish it. Some might ask: “Why do you have to publish your research findings?” or “Is it really necessary?”. However, there are many reasons why publishing your scientific work is a good idea and will be definitely worth it.

Reason #1 – You have the chance to add to the body of knowledge 
A scientific publication can bring a lot of benefits to those who publish, but also to academia. By publishing your work, you can contribute to enriching the literature world in a particular scientific field. Your findings can strengthen the arguments of others, while they can refute others. They will help shed light on issues that need resolution and will also help build theories. A theory can be born from a culmination of facts documented and discussed by a lot of researchers. Theories are explanations of phenomena based on insightful thinking from pieces of evidence that were systematically gathered. A theory is a simple generalization from what has been discovered so far. Thus, it is always possible that a new, better theory will arise with new tools available for research. Most scientists have a strong desire to contribute to the advancement of their field, which is often their primary reason for becoming a scientist. Publication is usually the most straightforward way to make such a contribution, and it is thus highly motivating (and satisfying) to most scientists.

Reason #2 – Your publication will help you become a recognized expert in your field
By publishing your scientific research on a specific topic or issue, you have the chance to gain credibility and become a recognized expert in that particular field. If there will be ever an organization that will need consultants along the area of your research, you will have аn advantage and precedence over other researchers who have not published anything yet. You just have to make sure that you do your research the right way. The methodology, in particular, is crucial because if it is found defective or could not be replicated by others, the rest of the paper will be rendered spurious or unreliable. However, when your research can bring impact to your field of study, you will get more citations, which will result in you standing out from the crowd. 

Reason #3 – Publication as a requirement for obtaining a qualification
There are also cases when a scientific publication is not just a better decision in terms of impact on the particular field, but also because of other self-interest motivation factors. Sometimes, publishing scientific research is a mandatory requirement for students to obtain a doctoral degree. In Germany, for example, apart from successfully writing a dissertation and passing an oral exam, students can only receive their diploma and use the ‘doctor’ title after their doctoral dissertation has been published. That being said, if you are a doctoral student in Germany, to graduate and then to continue with your professional path eventually, you will simply have to publish your piece of research.

Reason #4 – Publication as a step towards a successful career
By publishing your research finding you can reach the win-win situation where you can contribute to your field of study while also boosting your career. In fact, the more quality research publications you can produce, the better are the chances for you to pop up the ladder of success. Publishing may be or may be not required for career advancement, but in any case, it can only be an advantage that is frequently accompanied by direct or indirect monetary rewards. Publishing your work might also give you a better chance of getting a promotion. What is more, higher education institutions, for example, do give credit to meritorious research work that advances knowledge and brings about innovation. Professors from top universities always look for ideal candidates who have a solid research track record in their field of interest. Therefore, a publication may actually reserve you a post-doctoral seat with a scholarship. Additionally, you can do some productive research by publishing papers in high Impact Factor journals or conferences and based on it, you can start writing projects to get more funding from the Government or industry for a further research grant. A well-funded project will help you boost your career.