Glossary of Publishing Terms
Your A-Z guide to the language of scholarly communication.
A brief, comprehensive summary of the contents of an article.
A section of a research paper where authors thank individuals, institutions, or funding bodies for their contributions.
Alternative metrics to measure the impact of scholarly output beyond traditional citations, such as social media mentions, news coverage, and downloads.
A section at the end of a paper that includes supplementary information not essential to the main text.
A fee charged to authors to make their work available as open access.
A popular preprint server for papers in physics, mathematics, computer science, and related fields.
The state or fact of being the writer of a work. Determining authorship is based on significant intellectual contribution.
A list of sources consulted by the author, usually found at the end of a paper.
Peer review where the identities of authors and/or reviewers are concealed. Can be single-blind or double-blind.
A form of literary criticism in which a book is analyzed based on content, style, and merit.
A reference to a source of information in a scholarly work.
An organization providing guidance to editors and publishers on all aspects of publication ethics.
The exclusive legal right to print, publish, perform, film, or record literary, artistic, or musical material.
A notice of a correction of a significant error in a published article that was made by the author(s).
A public copyright license that enables the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work.
An official DOI Registration Agency that runs a cross-publisher citation linking system.
The intentional misrepresentation of research results by making up data.
Rejection of a submitted manuscript by a journal editor without sending it out for peer review.
A unique alphanumeric string assigned to a digital object, providing a persistent link to its location on the internet.
Peer review where the identities of both the authors and the reviewers are concealed from each other.
The lead editor of a journal, with final responsibility for its content and policies.
A period during which access to journal articles is restricted to subscribers, before they become freely available.
A notice of a correction of a significant error in a published article that was introduced by the publisher.
An illustration, photograph, chart, or graph included in a scholarly article to present data or concepts visually.
A model where an article is made immediately available for free on the journal's website, often funded by an Article Processing Charge (APC).
A model where an author archives a version of their subscription-based article (e.g., the accepted manuscript) in a repository, making it freely available after an embargo period.
An author-level metric that attempts to measure both the productivity and citation impact of a scholar's publications.
A measure reflecting the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in a specific journal.
An online archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a university.
An eight-digit serial number used to uniquely identify a serial publication, such as a journal or magazine.
The version of a paper that is submitted to a journal for consideration before it has been peer-reviewed or published.
A statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies to derive a pooled estimate with more statistical power.
A publishing model where research is made available online to all readers without subscription fees.
A form of peer review where the identities of authors and reviewers are known to each other, and the review reports may be published alongside the article.
A non-proprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify academic authors and contributors.
The process of subjecting an author's scholarly work to the scrutiny of experts in the same field before publication.
The practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own without proper attribution.
Review and critique of an article after it has been formally published, often conducted on platforms like PubPeer.
An exploitative publishing business model that involves charging publication fees to authors without providing the editorial and publishing services associated with legitimate journals.
A version of a scholarly paper that precedes formal peer review and publication in a journal.
The typeset version of a manuscript sent to the corresponding author for final review and correction before publication.
A measure of a journal's ranking within its subject category, based on its Impact Factor. Journals are divided into four quartiles (Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4), with Q1 representing the top 25% of journals.
A public statement made by a journal to withdraw a published article due to serious flaws, such as data fabrication, major errors, or plagiarism.
An expert in a particular field who is asked by a journal editor to provide a critical assessment of a submitted manuscript.
Peer review where the reviewers know the authors' identities, but the authors do not know the reviewers'.
The final, published version of a journal article that has been copyedited, typeset, and formatted by the publisher.
A markup language used to encode documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. It is the standard for archiving and exchanging scholarly articles.