Publication
A publication is a document or a
work that have been published, that is: made public. The
institution that publish documents is called "a publisher" or "a press".
(The publisher may be the author of the document or the
institute in which he is working). The
difference between a published and a unpublished document is that the
publication is
issued in multiple copies and made available for sale (or distribution or requisition)
for the public or
a representative part of the public. Manuscripts available in public
archives are thus not considered publications because
they do not exist in multiple copies. Lecture
notes distributed to students are not publications even they are made in many
copies because they are not distributed to a representative part of the public.
There is no sharp limit between publications and unpublished papers. There are,
for example, semi-publications or "gray literature"
such as reports. In practice is it an important criterion for publication
whether or not a document is registered in a
national bibliography, which increases its
visibility for libraries and booksellers.
An author may work continuously with the development of his ideas and write many drafts and manuscripts. When his work is published, it implies a relative degree of ending, closing, definitiveness and fixation. Of course may publications be revised in new editions. However, a publication cannot be retracted in an absolute sense, and scholars often compare different editions in order to illuminate the development of a theory or an author's thoughts. That a manuscript is published implies thus an important change in the status of a document in scholarly and scientific communication.
When choosing the way to publish their
works, authors may be interested in making the choice optimal (see, for example,
Oster, 1980). A work may be published more or less locally or internationally.
It may be published in journals with a small or a high
impact factor. High impact journals are better
covered by indexing and abstracting services and thus have a higher
visibility.
Literature:
Oster, S.
(1980). The Optimal Order for Submitting Manuscripts. American Economic
Review, 70(3), 444-448.
See also: Bibliographic control; Bibliography; Grey literature; Printing; Publications, forms of;
Publications, normative guidelines; Publishing, electronic; Retraction of publications; Visibility;
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 18-05-2006