Publishing

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.

Source: Why Open Research (n.d.). Publish where you want
Source: Why Open Research (n.d.). Publish where you want

Why do academics publish?

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.

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What do academics publish?

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

 

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Publishing a journal article

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.

Selecting a journal

When publishing a journal article, you need to select a journal to submit your article to. This choice is based on:

  • the scope of the journal: does your article fit in?
  • the quality of the journal: what is its impact factor and are its articles included in well-known databases such as Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection?
  • the policy of the journal with regards to peer review and Open Access: do you agree with their policy?
  • the audience of the journal: who will be interested in your article?

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.

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.

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Writing

For more information about writing go to:

You can also contact The Writing Centre.
The Writing Centre is intended for bachelor and master students at TU Delft who need help with a writing task.

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References

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