Scientific, technical, and medical (STM) literature is a large industry which generated $19 billion in revenue; 60% of that revenue came from North America.[1] Most scientific research is initially published in scientific journals and considered to be a primary source; see that article for details. Technical reports,
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for minor research results and engineering and design work (including computer software) round out the primary literature. Secondary sources in the sciences include articles in review journals (which provide a synthesis
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of research articles on a topic to highlight advances and new lines of research), and books for large projects, broad arguments, or compilations of articles. Tertiary sources might include encyclopedias and similar works intended for broad public consumption.
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A partial exception to scientific publication practices is in many fields of applied science, particularly that of U.S. computer science research. An equally prestigious site of publication within U.S. computer science are some academic conferences[citation needed]. Reasons for this departure include a large number of such conferences, the quick pace of research progress due to Moore’s Law, and computer science professional society support for the distribution and archiving of conference proceedings.[6]
[edit] Social sciences
Publishing in the social sciences is very different in different fields. Some fields, like economics, may have very “hard” or highly quantitative standards for publication, much like the natural sciences. Others, like anthropology or sociology, emphasize field work and reporting on first-hand observation as well as quantitative work. Some social science fields, such as public health or demographics, have significant shared interests with professions like law and medicine, and scholars in these fields often also publish in professional magazines.
[edit] Humanities
Publishing in the humanities is in principle similar to publishing elsewhere in the academy; a range of journals, from general to extremely specialized, are available, and university presses print many new humanities books every year.
Scholarly publishing requirements in the humanities (as well as some social sciences) are currently a subject of significant controversy within the academy. The following describes the situation in the United States. In many fields, such as literature and history, several published articles are typically required for a first tenure-track job, and a published or forthcoming book is now often required before tenure. Some critics complain that this de facto system has emerged without thought to its consequences; they claim that the predictable result is the publication of much shoddy work, as well as unreasonable demands on the already limited research time of young scholars. To make matters worse, the circulation of many humanities journals in the 1990s declined to almost untenable levels, as many libraries cancelled subscriptions, leaving fewer and fewer peer-reviewed outlets for publication; and many humanities professors’ first books sell only a few hundred copies, which often does not pay for the cost of their printing. Some scholars have called for a publication subvention of a few thousand dollars to be associated with each graduate student fellowship or new tenure-track hire, in order to alleviate the financial pressure on journals.
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