Apr 18, 20226 min read

What are the Acceptable Types of Research Articles for Publication?

It is helpful to be aware of the different types of scientific articles published by peer-reviewed journals.

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There are many names under which health research articles are published in peer-reviewed health journals, which give the researcher the impression that there are many various types that he/she must know. As researchers, we are curious about these types of articles and how they are prepared. In this essay, we will present the most important types of published articles and their content. The researcher must be aware of the types of scientific articles as well as the criteria and regulations of preparing them according to the format of scientific writing rules for the type of the submitted article, which he/she aspires to deliver to a specific authority, whether it is a journal publication or an academic or work assignment.

What are the Types of Scientific Articles?

Most published articles include one of the following types; original research article, review article, commentary article, a case study article or case report, correspondence, perspective article, methodologies or methods article, and brief reports article.

Why should the Researcher know the Types of Scientific Articles submitted for Publication in Journals?

Expanding your knowledge of the types of research articles defines your goals through selecting the type of scientific articles which you would like to read, cite and get benefit from when preparing your research project. Therefore, you find that many publishing houses which contain refereed journals are keen to include (author guidelines-icon) box on their online platforms, mentioning the types of articles that can be published and also clarifying the rules for writing these articles. You, as a researcher, must observe these rules and prepare your articles based on them to be able to publish in these journals, which is your main goal at the end of your research project so that you can spread the knowledge extracted from your research. Therefore, the rules for preparing these types of articles are drawn up depending on which journal is to be published in.

What are the Objectives of the Scientific Papers based on their Types? And What do they consist of?

The objectives of the papers and their components in general are fixed but, they differ slightly according to the guidelines of the style of the targeted journal for publication, for example: the most common type of journal manuscript used and intended to publish complete reports on scientific data for a research project may be called an original article, a research essay, or a research paper. It is written as follows: title, abstract, keywords, introduction, research methodology, results, discussion, conclusion, scientific references, tables and graphs, and also some researchers can add acknowledgment to those who practically contributed to the article. In addition to this, some researchers provide research data set for those who want to obtain the data of the research article as well as the limitations and strengths.

Review Article: The intent of writing this article is to provide an accurate summary of all the available primary research in response to the research question. The writing of the electronic review article is formulated by specifying the question(s) that the researcher will deal with, and the methods used to discover and select the best research articles to answer these questions. It also aggregates the available articles in one field rather than providing a comprehensive survey of the literature. For example, the prestigious Nature publishing emphasizes that the review article should refer briefly to opposing viewpoints, and should not focus on the work of the author himself. The language should be accessible, with new concepts defined and specialized terminology explained. Furthermore, all the reviews begin with an introduction to a maximum of 200 words, which should set the stage and end with a brief sentence. Reviews vary in length by topic and should not generally be more than 9 pages long. References used should not include more than 150 references.

Commentary Article: The aim is to comment on a newly published article by choosing a short title that emphasizes the main message of writing the article and you must make it clear that all comments are a reaction to a particular paper. It is as follows: identify the main issues you want to raise and add citation only to support the author’s point of view. Do not summarize the cited article; just add the reference, and assume that the reader has just read it. Then, go straight to identifying the main issues you want to raise. Writing this article is like drawing a road map for the proposed solution in detail, and taking a deep look at the problem is required. It is an attempt to present an original perspective to a wider audience of readers, through logical reasoning and examples, that are often written by the researcher commissioned by the magazine.

A Case Study Article or Case Report: This type includes detailed data on interesting phenomena for a particular disease or a specific event, with the aim of studying a specific disease case, and educating researchers about unusual phenomena that occur in this disease. It is as follows: abstract, introduction, case, discussion, and conclusion, and you must be keen on obtaining the patient's consent to share his/her data for publication.

Correspondence: is a short article which is written with the intention of briefly re-analyzing a portion of a previously published article, or discussing issues of particular interest to the community, but is not suitable as a standard research essay. The editor determines whether an article is accepted or not for peer review and the authors of the original article are invited to respond, and their response can be published as part of the correspondence. The article is usually worded (1000-1500 words), it should contain a title, abstract, keywords, correspondence text, list of abbreviations, (ethics consent and consent to share, consent to publish, availability of data and materials, declaration of conflicts of interest, funding if any, authors’ contributions, acknowledgments, authors’ information (optional)) and references.

Perspective Article: This article is intended to provide a space for researchers to discuss and highlight the points of view of a single or a group of recently published papers, or a current research topic of high personal interest. It is more forward-looking and/or speculative than reviews and may take a narrower field of view. It may be opinionated but it should remain balanced and aim at stimulating discussion and new empirical methods. Usually, the essay is worded as follows: 2,000 to 4,000 words in total including the summary and main text (and an introduction, coherent paragraphs, and each paragraph should support the thesis statement and build on the previous paragraph and the content should flow smoothly into the conclusion, references, and figure keys). It must also have a short title, abstract of 50 words or less, not more than 35 references, and 1 or 2 figures (with an illustration) or tables.

Methodologies or Methods Article: This article presents a new experimental method, or a test, or a procedure for a new research methodology. It may provide a better version of an existing method, and the article should describe demonstrable progress in comparison with what is available from existing methodologies. It is formulated as follows: title, abstract, keywords, background, methods, results and discussions, and conclusion.

Brief Reports Article: The aim is to write brief reports on previously published research data from original papers, which the editors believe will be of interest to a wide range of researchers and will encourage further investigation in the field. Scientists whose research results are in highly competitive research fields or in rapidly developing disciplines find this type of article very useful. Due to its length limit, this format often does not publish some experimental details until the authors write an original research manuscript. It takes more work but the beauty is that summary reports, when written, usually turn out to be much better than the full original research and are more likely to actually be read by people. The article is formatted based on the style guidelines of the target journal and the summary report may take a different format. In general, though, it usually consists of four sections—Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion—all written in a manner similar to full reports, but more intense.

Conclusion:

Knowing the scientific research articles does not only facilitate your work as a researcher and show you the importance of these articles in the scientific field for which the article was written, but it also helps you to know the skills and knowledge required to write the different types of these articles.

The research contributions depend on the research article presented, and the research community agrees collectively on the importance of research based on the type of article presented because some types of articles are more important, useful ,and comprehensive in their effect than others. A scholarly article written in the Comprehensive Research Review format, for example, is higher and more comprehensive in its use of citation than its counterparts of the other types of articles.