Scientific publication process and its impact on growth of science

Abstract

Scientific publications are important for researchers to learn about earlier research in an area and also communicate their own research work. It helps the scholar and the publisher to achieve greater visibility to their research and to the reader to learn about an author’s work. This paper reports the scientific publication process and reviews the existing literature on scholarly communication and evaluation. The concept of "stakeholders circle methodology" has been adopted to draw a generalised approach for visualising research impact. In this study, scientific publication process has been divided into two stages: pre-and post-publication. Both these stages have significant impact on the publication process, from communication to dissemination. In the pre-publication stage, various components such as creation (for novelty and integrity), evaluation (for generality and quality), and publishing (for copyright and cost) are discussed. In the post-publication stage, the outcomes (publications, patents and citations) hold significance, particularly in measuring research impact for greater visibility, promotion, rank and reputation.