Publishing Different Article Types

The Turing Way project illustration by Scriberia. Used under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.3332807.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite	Importance	Skill Level	Notes
Open Research	Helpful	Beginner	Of particular relevance is the chapter on Open Access
Data Articles	Helpful	Beginner	Gives an overview of where to publish data articles
Citing Research Objects	Helpful	Beginner	Information about how to cite research objects

Summary

This chapter describes the new types of articles born out of the growth of open research and the expansion in publishing all aspects of the research lifecycle. Each subchapter gives an overview of an article type.

Subchapters included are:

• Data Papers

• Methods Papers

• Micropublishing

• Software Papers

• Registered Reports

Motivation and Background

Traditionally journal publications have been stand alone research articles, often with a format of abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion sections.

This format was often quite limiting and meant things like datasets, software (scripts, code, apps, tools) and methods were often squeezed into research articles with little detail due to word limits, hidden in supplementary material or not included at all.

Researchers therefore increasingly deposit these research objects in repositories to make them usable and discoverable by others. Depositing them with rich metadata and linking to a research articles is best practice and you can find out more about how to do that in our Making Research Objects Citable chapter.

However, recently there has been the development of new article types, which allows all deposited research outputs produced during the research lifecycle to be published in their own right and further linked to the final interpretations and conclusions of a research project. The linking of these articles is one way to fully publish a reproducible research project.

Having separate article types for these outputs allows the people involved, such as research software engineers and data stewards, to receive sufficient credit, attribution and visibility for their work and contributions, particularly as publications are still the main currency by which researchers are evaluated.

Theses articles are also important for the sustainability, reproducibility and openness of these research outputs as writing detailed publications means greater care and attention is directed at describing and explaining these outputs and in turn makes these outputs more FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable).

Note: in this chapter and subchapter we are using the word ‘article’ and ‘paper’ interchangeably.