#75 Why publishing

Hey friends,

Back in July, while I was in Morocco, a PhD candidate asked me questions about the type of papers he should work on and how to select journals for publications

He was telling me his strategy: he focuses on producing systematic reviews and looks at a combination of journal indicators

Over time, I heard similar stories

But many tend to forget why we publish in the first place.

Once we know the why, what we do and how we do it, things tend to becomes easier

Journals have been created to communicate knowledge in the first place

researchers publish their studies to tell us what works, what doesn’t and what others may do with this new knowledge

This is basically how the body of knowledge builds up: it’s a combination of all the papers ever published

One paper at a time

Overtime, we got different types of publications, like articles, conference proceedings, books, book chapters, letters etc.

They all differ in terms of purpose, style, length, but also visibility and value

A research article adds new knowledge, original contributions to a field.
It is the most important article type.

Next, you have different types of articles. For instance, a theoretical article will develop new models and conceptual understanding. This type of papers focus on the intellectual framework in a field. You also have methodological articles which improve existing research methods or develop new ones. These papers are essential in terms of research efficiency and reproducibility

Then you have reviews or review articles. Their purpose is to critically summarize existing publications and identify what we don’t know yet. This type of study are useful when you need a quick start on the literature, it can also inform future studies.

Speaking of reviews, you will also find book reviews that evaluate scientific books.

Next, you will also hear researchers saying they need to present their work (very often still in progress). We do that through conferences. You share your work in a few pages (shorter than an article) to gather feedback. Once published, we get the conference proceedings, a collection of all the studies presented at the conference. Conferences can also help you build your network. Note that peer reviews in conferences are less strict and much faster than the ones conducted for publication in journals

A case study is also a common publication type. It provides a detailed analysis into a specific context. You could reuse established methods on individual or several cases, not studied enough yet

Finally, I want to cover the meta-analyses. They use statistical methods to summarize and contrast findings across a large number of studies.

You will realize that these different publication types tend to have different complexity different behaviours in terms of visibility and citation impact. For instance, a conference proceeding is much shorter than a research article. And a review article tends to be more cited on average than a research article published the same year within the same field)

I personally find review articles more difficult to produce than research articles. Simply because synthesizing a relatively large amount of papers is not an easy task, and you need a broader view. For some reason, I see many young researchers focusing on this type only.

If you’re building your research profile, you may focus on Research Articles first.
They bring novelty, and are usually used to evaluate your research career

Once you’ve built a foundation, consider adding Review Articles that require synthesis skills and knowledge breadth and depth

The other types can follow as you grow your expertise

Key message: Keep in mind that we write to contribute.
Each paper you publish is part of our body of knowledge.

Try to remember why you’re writing your next manuscript.

Things will follow naturally after that

Well, that’s all for this week

Let me now your experience with these different publication types

As usual, let me know if you have any question or comment. I read all of them and respond as soon as I can

See you next Sunday,
Jamal

ps: I will be conducting several sessions this coming week in Morocco as follows:

The sessions will be 3 to 3.5 hours long starting at 9 am. Other cities in Morocco will follow in February and April 2026 insha Allah