A scientific article is an article written by a member of the scientific community, following specific rules and recommendations, and is published in a scientific journal.

What is the standard format for a scientific article? The scientific article usually follows a standardized format, with the following parts or sections:

• Summary or Abstract
• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion
• Acknowledgements
• Figures and/or Tables

The parts/sections do not necessarily have to be presented in that order. It is also possible to add, remove or change some of the titles, for example to omit "Acknowledgements" or to change "Results" to "Result and Discussion". The design depends on the purpose and aim of the article and its content, i.e. what type of article it is.

What is a scientific journal? A scientific journal is an academic publication with an editorial board and a number of expert reviewers. It also has an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) and it is published at regular intervals. Some journals are only published in printed versions, others only online, while some are both printed and published online. There are often several academic journals published within an academic field. For example, within the field of international political economy, there is one journal entitled New Political Economy and another entitled Review of International Political Economy. Further, there are journals that require a subscription, such as Nature, and there are open access journals that are free to download and read.

What is an open access journal? Open access journals are scientific journals that are free to read and use, no subscription required. One of the ideas behind this concept is that it will enable more people to benefit from the results of scientific projects. Research is often conducted with the aid of direct or indirect governmental funding and it is becoming increasingly frequent that grant organizations demand that researchers publish their results in open access journals rather than in subscription journals. You will find plenty of open access journals online via the Directory of Open Access Journals (Google 'DOAJ' to find its website).

What does submitted mean? Before an article is published, it is sent in to the journal’s editor. This process is called a submission. During this phase, between submission and acceptance, the article (which is not yet accepted for publication) is referred to as 'submitted'. A scientist, who receives a question about his or her latest study, may respond “it is submitted", meaning that the text is in the hands of the editor, waiting for acceptance.

What is a peer-review? Generally, all manuscripts submitted to scientific journals have to pass the inspection of a group of peers. This means that the editor of each journal will forward the manuscript to two or three experts who will read it, comment on it, and return their verdict to the editor. After this peer-review process, which often takes months, the manuscript is either totally rejected (i.e. it is not fit for the journal in question), accepted with revisions (i.e. the author has to rewrite parts of it) or accepted without revisions (i.e. it is published as it is). By and large, most manuscripts are accepted with revisions.

The text, often called a manuscript, has thus been scrutinized by experts from the academic field in question before it is accepted and published in the journal. Once the manuscript is published, it becomes a journal article. This, in turn, implies that each field monitors itself, in a sense, which ensures the highest possible standards. One might argue that it does not ensure the best possible quality in research, and there are objections to the peer-review system, but it is hard to find a substitute. It seems that the peer-review system will continue to be used by academic journals for a long time to come.

Peer reviews are often done anonymously (often called a blind-review process). It means that the editor removes the author’s name from the manuscript before forwarding it to the reviewers, i.e. the identity of the author is not known to the reviewers. Further, the identity of the reviewers is not revealed to the author. This helps ensure an unbiased review of the manuscript.

What is the content of a scientific article? The content of such an article may of course vary, but can be divided into three broad types. The first type of article contains results from studies where data has been collected. For example, Mulet, Benedito, Bon and Rossell's article "Ultrasonic Velocity in Cheddar Cheese as Affected by Temperature" published 1999 in the Journal of Food Science, volume 64, issue 6, pages 1038–1041. These types of articles report the outcomes from scientific studies and the results are analyzed and discussed.

The second type of content is found in theoretical articles that are produced primarily to develop and put forward new theories from existing research. For example Newton's famous 1671 article where he discusses a new theory about light and colors. This article was published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (abbreviated "Phil. Trans."), which, incidentally, is the oldest journal in the world devoted entirely to science, founded in 1665.

The third type of content is presented in so called review articles. Such reviews present thorough and systematic reviews of other types of scientific articles. An example of such a review article is Arthur and Holder's "A Review of Transbuccal Fentanyl Use in the Emergency Department" published 2012 in the journal Pain Research and Treatment (DOI number 10.1155/2012/768796).

What is a DOI number? A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) number is usually attached to each scientific article. It is a way to mark and identify an individual article based on an international standard, and the overall idea is that this will make it easier to refer to, and to find, the article in question. In the three article examples above, Arthur and Holder's review article is presented with a DOI number.

Ending remark. Writing a scientific article is hard work and you have to be both accurate and motivated. I hope the information above has provided some insights into the process and that it will serve as a source of inspiration for you.