Writing up and publishing research: a glossary

Academic argument

Also called: argument, argumentation, academic arguments

An academic argument is a claim, often expressed as a thesis statement, backed by reasoning and evidence and developed through a paper to persuade the reader of a position. The UNC Writing Center stresses that it must do more than summarise sources, and that what counts as acceptable evidence differs from one field to another.

Academic journal

Also called: scholarly journal, peer-reviewed journal, scientific journal, refereed journal, research journal

An academic journal is a periodical that publishes research articles, reviews and other scholarly work in a field, usually after peer review, under an editor and an editorial board. Taylor & Francis, for example, states that every research article in its journals has been through editor screening, anonymous refereeing by independent experts and revision by the authors where required.

Academic poster

Also called: research poster, conference poster, scientific poster, poster presentation, poster

An academic poster is a large printed or digital sheet that summarises a study in brief text, tables, graphs and images, displayed at a conference while the author stands by it to discuss the work. Georgia State University's library notes that most conferences include poster presentations and that a poster should be readable from about ten feet away.

Academic voice

Also called: authorial voice, own voice, writer's voice, scholarly voice

Academic voice is the presence of the writer's own position in academic writing, shown in the claims, analysis and evaluation they add to the sources they use. University of Hull guidance separates the writer's own voice from the voices of others brought in by quotation or paraphrase, and the phrase is also used for the formal, measured tone academic prose expects.

Academic writing

Also called: scholarly writing, academic style

Academic writing is the formal, evidence-based writing of universities and research, in which claims are supported by cited sources or data and presented for critical readers in a field. The University of Sydney describes four main types, descriptive, analytical, persuasive and critical, and most assignments and theses combine several of them.

Acceptance

Also called: accepted for publication, acceptance letter, final acceptance

Acceptance is an editor's decision that a manuscript will be published, after which it moves to production for copy-editing, typesetting and proofs. The version accepted at this point is the accepted manuscript, and Taylor & Francis notes that outright acceptance without any revision is uncommon.

Accepted manuscript

Also called: author accepted manuscript, author's accepted manuscript, AAM, postprint, post-print, accepted author manuscript, author manuscript

The accepted manuscript is the version of an article accepted for publication after peer review, with all revisions made but before the publisher's copy-editing and typesetting. It is the version funders such as UKRI and cOAlition S ask authors to deposit in a repository, the NIH calls it the author manuscript, and some call it the postprint, a name NISO finds misleading.

Acknowledgements

Also called: acknowledgments, acknowledgement section, acknowledgment

Acknowledgements are the section of a paper or thesis that thanks people and organisations who helped with the work but do not qualify as authors, such as advisers, technicians, participants or language editors. The ICMJE says contributors who meet fewer than all four of its authorship criteria should be acknowledged, with their contribution stated and, ideally, their written permission.

Active voice

Also called: active, active construction, active sentence

The active voice is a sentence form in which the doer of an action is the subject and comes before the verb, as in the researchers interviewed 40 nurses. APA Style asks writers to use it as much as possible, especially when describing what people did, because it makes sentences direct and shows who acted.

Altmetrics

Also called: alternative metrics, altmetric, online attention metrics

Altmetrics are measures of the attention research receives online outside traditional citation, such as mentions in news, social media, blogs, policy documents and clinical guidelines. Altmetric, a company that tracks them, presents them as a record of who is engaging with research and what they say, which may be positive or negative.

Appendix

Also called: appendices, appendixes

An appendix is a section at the end of a paper or thesis that holds material which supports the text but would interrupt it, such as questionnaires, interview guides, detailed tables or technical details. The ICMJE suggests appendices for such supporting detail, and SOAS University of London, for example, does not normally mark them, so they must not hold anything essential to the argument.

APA 7 format for a whole paper, section by section

ARRIVE

Also called: ARRIVE guidelines, ARRIVE 2.0, Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments

ARRIVE, Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments, is the reporting guideline for research using laboratory animals, first published in 2010 and updated as ARRIVE 2.0 in 2020. Its items are split into the ARRIVE Essential 10, the minimum to report, and a Recommended Set that describes the research context.

Article processing charge

Also called: APC, APCs, article publishing charge, article publication charge, publication fee, open access fee

An article processing charge is a fee paid by an author, their institution or funder to publish an article open access, most often in gold or hybrid journals. The ICMJE asks journals to state all fees clearly before authors submit, and Plan S asks that such fees match the services provided and be paid by funders or institutions rather than individual researchers.

Article type

Also called: article types, manuscript type, paper type, publication type

An article type is a journal's category for a piece of writing, such as an original research article, review article, short communication, case report, methods article, letter or editorial, each with its own length and structure. Springer Nature notes that despite the many names journals use, most articles fall into a handful of such types.

Article withdrawal

Also called: withdrawn article, withdrawal of an article in press

An article withdrawal is the removal of an early online version of an article, which Elsevier allows only for an article in press posted by mistake or duplicated through an editorial or production error, leaving a notice in its place. It differs from a retraction, which keeps the article visible, and from removal for legal reasons, which is rarer still.

Associate editor

Also called: AE, associate editors

An associate editor is a member of a journal's editorial team who handles individual manuscripts, assessing them and finding, on average, two independent reviewers before recommending a decision. Taylor & Francis groups associate, deputy and reviews editors as supporting editors who help the lead editors run peer review.

Author affiliation

Also called: affiliation, institutional affiliation, author affiliations

An author affiliation is the department and institution with which an author is connected for a piece of work, printed under the author's name. APA Style gives the student's own university on a student paper and the institution where the research was done on a professional paper, with superscript numbers linking authors to affiliations when they differ.

Author contributions statement

Also called: author contributions, contributorship statement, contributors statement, statement of contribution, contribution statement

An author contributions statement is a short section of a paper that says what each author did, such as designing the study, collecting or analysing data, or drafting and revising the text. Many journals ask for it in CRediT roles, and a thesis that includes co-authored papers usually has to set out the candidate's own contribution to each one.

Author guidelines

Also called: instructions for authors, guide for authors, author instructions, submission guidelines, information for authors, IFA

Author guidelines are a journal's published instructions for preparing and submitting a manuscript, covering article types, length, structure, reference style, formatting, required statements and policies. Taylor & Francis calls them instructions for authors, and editors check that a submission follows them before sending it for review.

Journal manuscript references checklist, by journal style

Author note

Also called: author's note, authors' note

An author note is a block of short paragraphs on the title page of an APA Style professional paper giving each author's ORCID iD, any change of affiliation, study details such as registration, data sharing, disclosures and funding, and the corresponding author's contact details. APA requires one in papers submitted to journals, while student papers do not usually include it.

Author's original

Also called: author's original version, AO, original manuscript

The author's original is any version of an article that its author considers good enough to submit for formal peer review, with its content and layout set by the author. The NISO recommendations on journal article versions note that it is sometimes called a draft or a preprint, although those terms are not strictly the same thing.

Background section

Also called: background, background to the study, study background

The background is the part of a paper or thesis that gives the reader the context needed to follow the study, such as the problem, key concepts and earlier findings, before the aims are stated. In many journal articles it is part of the introduction, while structured abstracts and some theses and proposals give it a heading of its own.

Bias-free language

Also called: inclusive language, unbiased language, non-discriminatory language

Bias-free language is wording that describes people accurately and respectfully, avoiding terms that stereotype or demean them by age, disability, gender, racial or ethnic identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status or other characteristics. APA Style gives it a chapter of its manual, and the ICMJE asks authors to describe study participants in neutral, precise and respectful language.

BibTeX

Also called: .bib file, BibTeX entries, BibTeX database

BibTeX is reference-formatting software used with LaTeX, which reads a file of bibliographic records and produces the citations and reference list in the style a document calls for. Springer Nature's author tutorial names it among the tools for organising and formatting citations.

Block quotation

Also called: block quote, long quotation, set-off quotation

A block quotation is a long quotation set off from the text as its own indented paragraph, without quotation marks. In APA Style any quotation of 40 words or more is set this way, while a shorter one is run into the sentence in quotation marks, and both need a citation with the page number.

APA 7 format for a whole paper, section by section

Booster

Also called: boosters, boosting, boosting language

A booster is a word or phrase, such as clearly, definitely, always or will, that expresses certainty and strengthens a claim, the opposite of a hedge. EAP Foundation notes that boosters are less common than hedges in academic writing and are often overused by learners of academic English.

Bronze open access

Also called: bronze OA

Bronze open access describes articles that are free to read on the publisher's website but carry no clear open licence, so readers may read but not necessarily reuse them, and free access may be temporary. Piwowar and colleagues named the category in 2018 and found it was the most common kind of open access in their samples.

CARE guidelines

Also called: CARE checklist, CARE statement, CAse REport guidelines, CARE case report guidelines

The CARE guidelines are the consensus-based reporting guideline for clinical case reports, published in 2013 with a 13-item checklist that runs from the title, keywords and abstract through patient information, clinical findings, timeline, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up to the discussion, the patient's perspective and informed consent.

CC BY

Also called: CC-BY, Creative Commons Attribution, Attribution licence, CC BY 4.0, CC Attribution

CC BY, the Creative Commons Attribution licence, lets anyone copy, distribute, adapt and build on a work for any purpose, including commercial use, provided they credit the creator. It is the licence most open access funders prefer, including cOAlition S and UKRI, because it allows the widest reuse.

CC BY-NC

Also called: CC-BY-NC, Attribution-NonCommercial, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial

CC BY-NC, the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence, lets anyone reuse and adapt a work with credit to the creator, but only for non-commercial purposes, meaning uses not mainly intended for commercial advantage or payment. Unlike CC BY-NC-SA, it does not require adaptations to carry the same licence.

CC BY-NC-ND

Also called: CC-BY-NC-ND, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives

CC BY-NC-ND, the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence, lets anyone copy and share a work in unadapted form, for non-commercial purposes only and with credit to the creator. It is the most restrictive of the six Creative Commons licences, allowing sharing but no adaptation or commercial use.

CC BY-NC-SA

Also called: CC-BY-NC-SA, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

CC BY-NC-SA, the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence, lets anyone reuse and adapt a work for non-commercial purposes only, with credit to the creator, and requires any adaptation to be licensed under the same terms. It combines the non-commercial condition of CC BY-NC with the share-alike condition of CC BY-SA.

CC BY-ND

Also called: CC-BY-ND, Attribution-NoDerivatives, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives

CC BY-ND, the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives licence, lets anyone copy and distribute a work, including commercially, but only in unadapted form and with credit to the creator. UKRI and cOAlition S accept it only by exception, where a funder agrees that a no-derivatives licence is justified.

CC BY-SA

Also called: CC-BY-SA, Attribution-ShareAlike, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike

CC BY-SA, the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licence, lets anyone reuse and adapt a work, including commercially, with credit to the creator, on condition that any adaptation is licensed under the same or a compatible licence. That share-alike condition is what separates it from CC BY.

CC0

Also called: CC Zero, CC0 public domain dedication, public domain dedication, CC0 1.0

CC0 is a Creative Commons tool with which creators waive all their copyright and related rights in a work, as far as the law allows, placing it as near as possible in the public domain for anyone to use without conditions. DORA recommends that journals make the reference lists of research articles available under it.

CHEERS

Also called: CHEERS 2022, CHEERS checklist, Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards

CHEERS, the Consolidated Health Economic Evaluation Reporting Standards, is the reporting guideline for economic evaluations of health interventions, updated in 2022 as a 28-item checklist. It was published at the same time in several journals, including The BMJ and Value in Health.

Citation count

Also called: times cited, number of citations, cited by count, citation counts

A citation count is the number of times a work has been cited by other works in a particular database, such as Google Scholar, Scopus or Web of Science. Counts for the same paper differ between databases because each indexes different sources, and a count alone does not show whether the citations support, use or criticise the work.

Citation index

Also called: citation database, citation indexes, citation indices

A citation index is a database that records the references in the works it covers, so that users can see which later works cite a given paper, as Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar do. Citation counts, the h-index and journal metrics depend on which index is used, because each covers different sources.

Citation style

Also called: referencing style, reference style, citation format, referencing system, citation system

A citation style is a set of rules for citing sources in the text and listing them at the end, fixing the content, order and punctuation of each reference. Styles fall into author-date, author-page and numbered families, such as APA, MLA and Vancouver, and a journal's author guidelines or an assignment brief says which one to use.

APA vs MLA vs Chicago, and which citation style to use

CiteScore

Also called: CiteScore metric, Scopus CiteScore

CiteScore is Elsevier's journal metric from Scopus data: the citations received over four years by a journal's articles, reviews, conference papers, book chapters and data papers published in those same four years, divided by the number of those documents. Elsevier warns that it is not field-normalised, so journals in different subjects should not be compared by it.

Co-supervisor

Also called: second supervisor, co-advisor, co-adviser, joint supervisor, secondary supervisor

A co-supervisor is a second supervisor who shares the guidance of a research student with the principal supervisor, often bringing different expertise or methods. Stanford, for example, allows co-advisers alongside a principal dissertation adviser, and in UK universities the role usually sits within a supervisory team.

Code availability statement

Also called: code availability, software availability statement

A code availability statement is a section of a paper that says whether and how readers can obtain the custom computer code or algorithm on which its conclusions depend, and any limits on access. Nature Portfolio journals require one for such studies, placed after the data availability statement and before the references, and may ask for the code to be shared with reviewers.

Collaborative peer review

Also called: collaborative review, joint peer review

Collaborative peer review is a model in which reviewers work together on a manuscript and submit one agreed report, or work with the authors to improve the paper until it is publishable. Wiley notes it can feel more constructive but loses the benefit of independent assessments and risks blurring the line between writing a paper and appraising it.

Conclusion section

Also called: conclusion, conclusions, concluding chapter, concluding remarks

The conclusion is the closing section of a paper, report or thesis, which sums up what the study found and what it adds, answering the question set at the start. The University of Reading describes it as a short section with no new arguments or evidence, and the ICMJE asks that conclusions be tied to the study's aims and go no further than the data.

Conference abstract

Also called: meeting abstract, abstract submission, conference abstracts

A conference abstract is a short summary of a study submitted to be accepted for presentation at a conference, and often published in its programme or proceedings. It gives far less detail than a paper, which is why the ICMJE advises citing the published article rather than an abstract wherever possible.

Conference paper

Also called: conference contribution, proceedings paper, conference article

A conference paper is a written account of research presented at an academic conference, often published afterwards in the proceedings. In science, engineering and technology these are usually full papers and an important way of communicating research, while elsewhere they often report early findings whose full results appear later in a journal.

How to write an IEEE conference paper or technical report

Conference proceedings

Also called: proceedings, conference record, proceedings volume

Conference proceedings are the published collection of papers, or sometimes only abstracts, presented at an academic conference, issued in print or online. Iowa State University's library notes that they give a lasting record of the work shared at the event, and some fields rely on them heavily for sharing new research quickly.

Conflict of interest statement

Also called: competing interests statement, declaration of interests, disclosure statement, COI statement, declaration of competing interests, conflicts of interest statement

A conflict of interest statement is the section of a paper in which each author discloses financial and other relationships, such as employment, consultancies, shares, patents or personal rivalries, that readers might think could bear on the work. The ICMJE provides a uniform disclosure form that many journals use, and leaves readers to judge whether a disclosed relationship matters.

CONSORT

Also called: CONSORT statement, CONSORT 2025, CONSORT checklist, Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials

CONSORT, the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials, is the reporting guideline for randomised trials, updated as CONSORT 2025 with a 30-item checklist and a flow diagram of participants. It has extensions for designs such as cluster, non-inferiority and pragmatic trials, for harms and for trial abstracts.

CONSORT flow diagram

Also called: participant flow diagram, CONSORT diagram, trial flow diagram

A CONSORT flow diagram is the chart, part of the CONSORT reporting guideline, that shows the progress of all participants through a randomised trial, stage by stage, with the numbers at each stage. It lets a reader see at a glance how the number of participants changed between enrolment and analysis.

Copy-editing

Also called: copyediting, copy editing, copyedit, copy-editor, copyeditor

Copy-editing is the detailed editing of a text before layout: correcting grammar, spelling and punctuation, making language and formatting consistent and checking that it reads clearly for its purpose. The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading places it between developmental editing, which shapes content and structure, and proofreading, the final check on the laid-out proof.

Copyright transfer agreement

Also called: CTA, copyright assignment, copyright transfer, transfer of copyright, copyright transfer form

A copyright transfer agreement is a contract by which an author assigns the copyright in an article to the publisher, usually in return for publication in a subscription journal. Taylor & Francis, for example, builds the transfer into its author publishing agreement, while letting authors keep some rights, and in some circumstances accepts a non-exclusive licence instead.

COREQ

Also called: COREQ checklist, Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research

COREQ, the Consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research, is a 32-item checklist for reporting studies that use interviews and focus groups, published by Tong, Sainsbury and Craig in 2007. Its items fall into three domains: the research team and reflexivity, the study design, and the data analysis and reporting.

Correction notice

Also called: correction, published correction, correction to an article

A correction notice is a published statement that fixes an error in an article, citing the original and saying what was changed, linked to it so that readers of either can find the other. The ICMJE asks journals to publish one promptly, post a corrected version with the changes dated and keep the earlier versions, while matters of debate belong in letters instead.

Corresponding author

Also called: correspondence author, corresponding authors

The corresponding author is the author who handles a manuscript's dealings with the journal, from submission through review to proofs, and whose contact details are printed for readers. The NISO recommendations on journal article versions describe this role, and the ICMJE asks for the corresponding author's telephone number and email address on the title page.

Corrigendum

Also called: corrigenda, author correction

A corrigendum is a published correction of an error or omission made by the authors, where the article's results and conclusions still stand. At Elsevier the authors draft it, all of them must agree and the editor approves it, and it is linked to the article it corrects, whereas an error introduced by the publisher is corrected with an erratum.

Counterargument

Also called: counter-argument, counterclaim, counter-claim, opposing view, objection

A counterargument is an objection or alternative view that a writer anticipates and answers in order to strengthen their own argument, either by conceding part of it or by showing why it fails. The UNC Writing Center advises dealing with one or two serious counterarguments in depth rather than listing many superficially.

Cover letter

Also called: covering letter, submission letter, cover letter to the editor

A cover letter is the letter to a journal's editor sent with a manuscript, explaining what the study found, why it matters and why it suits the journal's readers, and confirming that it is not published or under consideration elsewhere. Taylor & Francis advises checking the instructions for authors first, since not every journal requires one.

Creative Commons licence

Also called: Creative Commons license, CC licence, CC license, Creative Commons licences, Creative Commons licenses

A Creative Commons licence is a standard public licence with which a creator keeps copyright but grants everyone permission in advance to share, and sometimes adapt, a work on stated conditions, such as giving credit. There are six licence types, from CC BY, the most permissive, to CC BY-NC-ND, the most restrictive, and a separate CC0 tool for the public domain.

CRediT taxonomy

Also called: CRediT, Contributor Role Taxonomy, contributor roles taxonomy, CRediT roles, CRediT statement

The CRediT taxonomy, short for Contributor Role Taxonomy, is a standard list of 14 roles, such as conceptualisation, data curation, formal analysis, supervision and writing (original draft or review and editing), used to record who did what in a piece of research. It was approved as an ANSI/NISO standard in 2022, and many journals ask authors to describe their contributions in its terms.

Critical writing

Also called: writing critically, critical academic writing

Critical writing is writing that develops a reasoned argument by analysing, evaluating and comparing evidence rather than only reporting it. University of Hull guidance contrasts it with descriptive writing, which informs the reader without transforming the information, and notes that students are often told their work is too descriptive and not critical enough.

Crossmark

Also called: Crossmark button, Crossmark status

Crossmark is a Crossref service, shown as a button on an article's web page and in its PDF, that tells readers whether the work has been updated, corrected or retracted and gives other details such as key dates and licences. Because the button works inside a downloaded PDF, it can alert a reader to changes made long after the download.

Data availability statement

Also called: data access statement, data sharing statement, availability of data and materials, DAS, data statement

A data availability statement is a short section of a paper telling readers where the data behind its results can be found and on what terms, such as a repository link with a DOI, access on request, or why the data cannot be shared. Springer Nature requires one in original research articles, and ICMJE journals require a data sharing statement for clinical trials.

Decision letter

Also called: editorial decision, decision email, editor's decision

A decision letter is the editor's message telling authors the outcome of peer review, such as acceptance, minor or major revision, or rejection, usually with the reviewer reports attached. SAGE encourages its editors to share suggestions for improvement in the decision letter even when rejecting a paper.

Declaration of originality

Also called: statement of originality, declaration of authorship, candidate's declaration, author's declaration, originality declaration

A declaration of originality is a signed statement at the front of a thesis in which the candidate confirms that the work is their own, that the work of others is acknowledged and that it has not been submitted for another degree. Universities word it differently, and the University of Windsor, for example, has a separate version for theses that include published or co-authored material.

Delayed open access

Also called: delayed OA, embargoed open access

Delayed open access is the opening of articles in a subscription journal after an embargo period, so that they become free to read some time after publication. Piwowar and colleagues list it among the recognised kinds of open access, alongside gold, green and hybrid.

Descriptive writing

Also called: description, descriptive academic writing

Descriptive writing is writing that reports information, such as what a source says, how a method works or what happened, without analysing or judging it. It is needed for background and evidence, and the University of Sydney notes that a thesis's methods section is mostly descriptive, but an argument also needs critical writing.

Desk rejection

Also called: desk reject, desk-rejected, rejection without review, editorial rejection, immediate rejection

Desk rejection is an editor's decision to reject a manuscript without sending it for peer review, after an initial check finds it outside the journal's scope, not following its guidelines or not a significant enough contribution. Taylor & Francis notes that this quick decision lets authors submit elsewhere without waiting for reviews.

Developmental editing

Also called: structural editing, developmental edit, structural edit

Developmental editing, also called structural editing, is editorial help that reshapes a text's content and structure before any line-by-line work. The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading lists it as the first of three editing stages, and university rules on assessed work, such as Nottingham's, forbid third parties from changing a student's content in this way.

Diamond open access

Also called: diamond OA, no-fee open access

Diamond open access is a publishing model in which journals and platforms charge neither readers nor authors. Science Europe and cOAlition S describe such journals as community-driven, academic-led and academic-owned, often small and multilingual, and have worked together since 2020 to strengthen them.

Direct quotation

Also called: quotation, quote, direct quote, quoting

A direct quotation reproduces another writer's words exactly, inside quotation marks or as a block, with a citation that includes the page or other location. APA Style advises paraphrasing more often than quoting and keeping quotations for exact definitions, memorable wording or words the writer wants to respond to.

When to paraphrase, quote or summarise

Directory of Open Access Journals

Also called: DOAJ

The Directory of Open Access Journals is an independent, community-run index of peer-reviewed open access journals, whose inclusion criteria are widely treated as a mark of a sound open access journal. Research on open access often defines gold open access as publication in a journal the directory lists.

Discussion section

Also called: discussion, discussion chapter

The discussion is the section of a research paper that interprets the results: it summarises the main findings, explains what they may mean, sets them against earlier evidence, states the study's limitations and draws out implications. The ICMJE warns against repeating the results in detail and against conclusions the data do not support.

Dissertation

Also called: doctoral dissertation, master's dissertation, undergraduate dissertation, PhD dissertation

A dissertation is an extended piece of independent research written for a degree. In the UK the word usually means the long project of a bachelor's or taught master's degree, while in the United States it usually means the doctoral work that UK universities call a thesis, so students should use the word their own university uses.

Managing dissertation references from proposal to submission

Dissertation committee

Also called: thesis committee, doctoral committee, reading committee, dissertation reading committee, advisory committee, supervisory committee

A dissertation committee is the group of faculty members, led by the principal adviser, who guide, read and approve a doctoral dissertation, a common arrangement in North American universities. At Stanford, for example, the reading committee has three to five members, at least one from the student's own programme, and all must approve the dissertation.

Double-anonymous peer review

Also called: double-anonymised peer review, double-anonymized peer review, double-blind peer review, double-blind review, double blind peer review

Double-anonymous peer review is peer review in which neither the reviewers nor the authors are told each other's identities, so authors remove identifying details from the manuscript. Taylor & Francis notes it is common in the humanities and some social sciences, and that reviewers may still recognise an author from the topic, the references or the style.

Edited collection

Also called: edited volume, edited book, edited collections

An edited collection is a book of chapters by different authors, brought together and introduced by one or more editors around a common theme. UKRI's open access policy treats edited collections, like monographs and book chapters, as long-form outputs with their own rules.

Editing

Also called: revising a draft, self-editing, editing a draft

Editing, in the sense writing guides use, is revising a draft for content, organisation, clarity and style: whether the argument holds, the paragraphs are in the right order and the evidence supports each claim. The UNC Writing Center treats it as a separate stage from proofreading, which comes last and looks only at surface errors, though many people use the words interchangeably.

Editor-in-chief

Also called: EIC, chief editor, lead editor, journal editor

The editor-in-chief is the senior academic with overall responsibility for a journal's content, policies and editorial direction, and the final say on disputed decisions. The Royal Society notes that an editor-in-chief may not see every paper but is involved in particular cases, while day-to-day handling of manuscripts falls to other editors.

Editorial

Also called: editorial comment, editorial article

An editorial is a short opinion article in a journal, written by an editor or an invited expert, that comments on an article in the same issue or on a current topic. It presents a view rather than new data, and the ICMJE notes that editorials, like case reports and narrative reviews, may have less structured formats than research articles.

Editorial board

Also called: editorial team, board of editors

An editorial board is the group of researchers who help run a journal, handling manuscripts, advising on its policy and scope and sometimes reviewing. At the Royal Society's journals, for example, it is made up of subject editors, who oversee broad disciplines, and associate editors grouped by subject.

Embargo period

Also called: open access embargo, OA embargo, publisher embargo, embargo

An embargo period is the time a publisher requires before an author may make a version of their article or book freely available, for example in a repository. UKRI's policy allows no embargo for research articles and at most 12 months for monographs published from 2024, and cOAlition S funders also require articles to be open at publication.

EQUATOR Network

Also called: EQUATOR, Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research

The EQUATOR Network, short for Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research, is an international initiative that promotes clear and accurate reporting of health research and keeps a searchable library of reporting guidelines, listing over 700. It works through national centres in the UK, Canada, France, Australasia, China and the United States.

Erratum

Also called: errata, publisher's erratum, publisher correction

An erratum is a published correction of an error in an article, and at publishers such as Elsevier the word is kept for errors made by the publisher during production, while errors by the authors are corrected with a corrigendum. PubMed treats corrections, corrigenda, addenda and partial retractions alike as errata and links them to the article.

Ethics statement

Also called: ethics approval statement, ethical approval statement, statement of ethics approval, ethics declaration

An ethics statement is the sentence or short section of a paper that reports which independent body, such as a research ethics committee or institutional review board, approved the study, often with the approval reference and how consent was obtained. The ICMJE asks for it in the methods section, together with an explanation wherever compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki is in doubt.

Expression of concern

Also called: editorial expression of concern, EoC, notice of concern

An expression of concern is a notice published by a journal's editor warning readers that an article may be unreliable while questions about it remain unresolved, for example during an investigation. It stays on the record and is followed by a correction, retraction or note once the matter is settled, and the ICMJE asks that it be clearly labelled and indexed.

What a retraction is and how to check your reference list for one

External examiner

Also called: outside examiner, external reader

An external examiner is an examiner from outside the candidate's university, chosen for expertise in the field, whose part helps keep standards comparable between institutions. The QAA says at least one is required at every UK doctoral oral examination, and for some doctorates one may come from industry or another profession.

Field-weighted citation impact

Also called: FWCI, field weighted citation impact

Field-weighted citation impact is Elsevier's ratio of the citations an output has received to the citations expected for similar outputs of the same subject field, document type and publication year, so that 1.00 means exactly the world average. A value of 1.48, for example, means 48 per cent more citations than expected.

Findings chapter

Also called: findings, findings section, presentation of findings

The findings chapter is the part of a thesis or report that presents what the research found. The label is common in qualitative work, where the data are grouped into themes and illustrated with participants' words, whereas quantitative reports usually head the section Results and present numbers, tables and statistical tests.

First person in academic writing

Also called: first person, first-person pronouns, using I in academic writing, I and we in academic writing

Writing in the first person means using I or we for the writer's own actions and views, as in I interviewed twelve teachers. APA Style tells writers to use I or we rather than calling themselves the author, while some writing centres, such as the University of Nevada, Reno's, suggest stating claims without I, so the assignment's rules come first.

Five-year impact factor

Also called: 5-year impact factor, 5-year JIF, five year impact factor

The five-year impact factor is a variant of the Journal Impact Factor that uses a five-year citation window instead of two, which suits fields where citations build up slowly. Clarivate's own essay on the impact factor describes it as more useful for some users, and DORA lists it among the journal metrics to show alongside the two-year figure.

Formatting requirements

Also called: format requirements, formatting guidelines, formatting rules, thesis formatting guidelines, paper format

Formatting requirements are the rules for how a paper or thesis must look, such as margins, font, line spacing, page numbers, headings and the order of pages, set by a style guide, a university or a journal. APA 7 asks for one-inch margins, double spacing and a page number on every page, and an instructor or institution may set different rules, which then apply.

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Front matter

Also called: preliminary pages, front-matter, preliminaries

Front matter is the set of pages before the first chapter of a thesis or book, such as the title page, declaration, abstract, acknowledgements, table of contents and lists of figures, tables and abbreviations. Each university fixes their order and numbering, often in lower-case Roman numerals, and the University of Utah, for example, calls them the preliminary pages.

Funding statement

Also called: funding, funding information, sources of support, financial support statement, funding declaration

A funding statement is the part of a paper that names the grants and other support that paid for the work, usually with grant numbers. The ICMJE asks that it list only direct support for the work described, keep general institutional support for an author's time separate, and appear after the abstract so that indexes can pick it up.

Future research

Also called: directions for future research, suggestions for further research, further research, future directions, future work, recommendations for future research

Future research is the part of a discussion or conclusion that names the questions a study left open and the studies that could answer them, often following from its limitations. The ICMJE asks authors to explore implications for future research and to label any new hypotheses clearly, and APA Style suggests the present tense, as in future research should explore.

Gold open access

Also called: gold OA, gold route, open access journal publishing

Gold open access is publication of an article in a fully open access journal, in which every article is free to read on the journal's own website. Studies such as Piwowar and colleagues' 2018 analysis define it as publication in a journal listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, and it may or may not involve an article processing charge.

Graphical abstract

Also called: visual abstract, graphical abstracts

A graphical abstract is a single image that summarises the main message of an article so that a reader can grasp it at a glance. Elsevier, which also calls it a visual abstract, shows it in online search results and contents lists but usually not in the PDF, and asks for an original image that reads clearly from start to end.

Green open access

Also called: green OA, green route, repository route

Green open access is making a free copy of an article available in an open repository, usually the accepted manuscript, while the published version may stay behind a paywall. Piwowar and colleagues note that most green copies give the right to read but not to reuse, and UKRI accepts this route when the deposit is made at publication under a CC BY licence.

GRIPP2

Also called: GRIPP2 checklist, GRIPP2-LF, GRIPP2-SF

GRIPP2 is the reporting guideline for patient and public involvement in research, published in 2017 in two forms: a long form of 34 items for studies whose main focus is involvement, and a short form of five items for studies in which involvement is a secondary part.

Guest editor

Also called: guest editors

A guest editor is a researcher invited to edit a special issue or collection for a journal, usually proposing its theme and handling its submissions. The ICMJE says the journal's own editor must remain responsible for the work of any external editors and keep the authority to send papers for review or reject them.

h-index

Also called: Hirsch index, h index

The h-index is the largest number h such that a researcher has h papers each cited at least h times, so an h-index of 20 means 20 papers with 20 or more citations each. The physicist J. E. Hirsch proposed it in 2005, and it favours long careers, varies by field and by database, and includes self-citations.

h5-index

Also called: h5 index, h5

The h5-index is Google Scholar Metrics' measure of a publication, such as a journal or conference: the h-index calculated only from its articles published in the last five complete calendar years. Google Scholar ranks publications by it and also reports the h5-median, the median citation count of the articles that make up the h5-index.

Handling editor

The handling editor is the editor responsible for one manuscript's progress through peer review, choosing the reviewers, weighing their reports and recommending or making the decision. At many journals this is an associate editor, and at some, as Li and Smeds describe for their journal, the decision then goes to the editor-in-chief for final approval.

Heading levels

Also called: levels of heading, APA headings, heading hierarchy, heading styles

Heading levels are the ranked styles of section headings in a paper, which show how sections nest inside one another. APA Style has five, from a centred bold Level 1 to an indented bold italic Level 5 that runs into its paragraph, and advises using only as many levels as the paper needs and never numbering or lettering them.

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Hedging

Also called: hedges, hedging language, cautious language, tentative language, hedge

Hedging is the use of cautious language, such as may, might, suggest, appear or likely, to show how certain a claim is and to separate evidence from interpretation. Oxford's academic writing guidance presents it as a way to match a claim's strength to its support, and warns that too much hedging makes writing sound unsure and speculative.

House style

Also called: in-house style, in-house guide, in-house style guide, journal style

House style is a publisher's or organisation's own set of style preferences, applied on top of a general manual so that all its publications are consistent, such as which of two accepted spellings to use. A journal's house style covers matters from reference format to headings, which is why its author guidelines must be read before a manuscript is formatted.

Hybrid open access

Also called: hybrid OA, hybrid journal, hybrid model

Hybrid open access is publication of a single article open access, usually for an article processing charge, in a journal whose other articles are available only by subscription. cOAlition S funders support it only within transformative arrangements, and UKRI has committed to phase out its funding for hybrid publication.

i10-index

Also called: i10 index, i-10 index

The i10-index is the number of a researcher's publications that have been cited at least ten times, a measure created by Google Scholar and shown only in its profiles, alongside the h-index and total citations. Like other citation counts, it should not be used to compare researchers across fields or career stages.

ICMJE Recommendations

Also called: ICMJE, Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, Uniform Requirements, Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals

The ICMJE Recommendations are the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors' guidance on the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of work in medical journals, covering authorship, disclosure, peer review, corrections, trial registration and manuscript preparation. First published in 1978 as the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals, they were last updated in January 2026.

Implications section

Also called: implications, implications for practice, implications for policy, practical implications, theoretical implications

The implications are the part of a discussion or conclusion that explains what the findings mean for practice, policy, theory or later research, and for whom. The ICMJE asks authors to explore the implications for future research and for clinical practice or policy, and to avoid claims about economic benefits without economic data and analysis.

IMRaD

Also called: IMRD, introduction, methods, results and discussion, IMRaD format, IMRaD structure

IMRaD is the standard structure of a research article: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. The ICMJE calls it a reflection of the process of scientific discovery rather than an arbitrary format, and a survey of four leading medical journals found it first appeared in the 1940s and was the only pattern for their original papers by the 1980s.

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In-principle acceptance

Also called: provisional acceptance, Stage 1 acceptance

In-principle acceptance is a journal's commitment, made after the first stage of review of a registered report, to publish the finished study whatever its results, provided the authors follow the approved protocol and report clearly. The Center for Open Science says it may be withdrawn only for failings of quality, departures from the protocol or unresolvable problems of clarity.

Independent chair

Also called: viva chair, independent chair of the viva, non-examining chair

An independent chair is a person, not one of the examiners, who presides over a doctoral oral examination to see that it is run fairly and by the regulations. The QAA notes that a growing number of UK universities use one, while others record their vivas for the same purpose.

Institutional repository

Also called: IR, university repository, research repository

An institutional repository is a university's or research organisation's online archive for its researchers' outputs, such as accepted manuscripts, theses and data, made openly available. UKRI lets funded authors meet its open access rule by depositing the accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository at publication under a CC BY licence.

Internal examiner

Also called: internal, internal reader

An internal examiner is a member of the candidate's own university who examines a thesis alongside the external examiner, and who is not the candidate's supervisor. At the University of Leeds, for example, the internal examiner checks and approves the candidate's corrections after the viva.

Introduction section

Also called: introduction, introductory chapter, intro

The introduction is the opening section of a paper or thesis, which gives the context of the study, the problem and why it matters, and usually ends by stating the purpose, question or hypothesis. The ICMJE advises citing only directly relevant work there and keeping the study's own data out, and APA Style papers do not label it with a heading.

Journal Article Reporting Standards

Also called: JARS, APA Style JARS, JARS-Quant, JARS-Qual, JARS-Mixed, JARS-REC

The APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards, or JARS, set out what each section of a paper should report, in versions for quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research, with further standards on race, ethnicity and culture that apply to all studies. APA presents them as a standard for journals and a teaching tool for students.

Journal Citation Reports

Also called: JCR, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate)

Journal Citation Reports is Clarivate's annual database of journal citation indicators, drawn from the Web of Science, that gives each covered journal's Impact Factor, its rank and quartile in each subject category, and measures such as the immediacy index and cited half-life. It was first published in 1975 as part of the Science Citation Index and the Social Sciences Citation Index.

Journal Impact Factor

Also called: JIF, impact factor, IF, two-year impact factor, Clarivate impact factor

The Journal Impact Factor is Clarivate's measure of how often a journal's recent content is cited: citations in one year to items it published in the previous two years, divided by the number of articles and reviews it published in those two years. It was devised to help librarians choose journals, and DORA and the ICMJE warn against using it to judge individual papers or researchers.

Journal quartile

Also called: Q1 journal, Q2 journal, Q3 journal, Q4 journal, quartile ranking, JIF quartile

A journal quartile places a journal in the top, second, third or bottom quarter of its subject category by a metric, so a Q1 journal ranks above at least 75 per cent of the journals in its category. Clarivate assigns quartiles by Impact Factor for each category a journal belongs to, so one journal can be Q1 in one field and lower in another.

Journal scope

Also called: aims and scope, aims & scope, scope of the journal

A journal's scope, usually published as its aims and scope, states the subjects, article types and readers it publishes for. Editors check a submission against it first, and falling outside it is a common reason for rejection without review, so authors read it before choosing where to submit.

Keywords

Also called: key words, author keywords, keyword list

Keywords are the words and short phrases an author lists under the abstract to describe a paper's topic, population and method, so that databases can index it and readers can find it. APA Style asks for three to five on the line below the abstract, after an italic label, and notes that student papers do not usually need them unless the instructor asks.

APA 7 format for a whole paper, section by section

LaTeX

Also called: LaTeX typesetting, LaTeX document preparation system

LaTeX is a document preparation system for high-quality typesetting, in which authors mark up the structure of a text and leave its visual design to the system and its templates. The LaTeX Project describes it as not a word processor and says it is most used for medium-to-large technical and scientific documents.

Leiden Manifesto

Also called: Leiden Manifesto for research metrics, Leiden principles

The Leiden Manifesto is a set of ten principles for using metrics in research evaluation, published in Nature in 2015 by Diana Hicks, Paul Wouters and colleagues. Its first principle is that quantitative evaluation should support qualitative expert assessment, and others ask evaluators to allow for differences between fields and to avoid false precision.

Letter to the editor

Also called: letters to the editor, correspondence, letter

A letter to the editor is a short piece, published by a journal, that comments on or questions an article it recently published, or raises a matter of interest to its readers. The ICMJE notes that matters of scientific debate, as opposed to errors, are best handled through letters or online correspondence rather than through corrections.

Licence to publish

Also called: license to publish, exclusive licence to publish, exclusive license to publish, publishing licence, non-exclusive licence to publish

A licence to publish is an agreement in which the author keeps copyright but grants the publisher the right to publish the work, exclusively or not. Taylor & Francis publishes its open access articles this way under a Creative Commons licence, and cOAlition S says funders' prior licences take legal precedence over any later licence to publish.

m-index

Also called: m-quotient, m quotient, m index

The m-index is the h-index divided by the number of years since a researcher's first publication, proposed by Hirsch alongside the h-index as a way to compare scientists of different seniority. Hirsch cautioned that the first paper is not always the right starting point if steady work began later.

Major corrections

Also called: pass with major corrections, major corrections to a thesis

Major corrections are substantial changes that examiners require after a viva before a thesis can pass, such as reworking sections, analysis or arguments in ways that go beyond small fixes. The QAA notes six to twelve months as a common allowance, and whether the examiners see the revised thesis again depends on the university's rules.

Major revision

Also called: major revisions, major amendments, accept after major revisions

Major revision is an editorial decision that a manuscript may become publishable but needs substantial changes, such as further analysis, rewriting or missing detail, before it is reconsidered. The revised version usually goes back to the reviewers, and Taylor & Francis notes it may still be rejected if the changes are not adequate.

Manuscript

Also called: MS, journal manuscript, manuscripts

A manuscript is an author's version of an article, chapter or book as submitted to a publisher and revised during review, before it is copy-edited and typeset. The NISO recommendations on journal article versions distinguish the author's original, the submitted manuscript under review and the accepted manuscript.

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Manuscript submission

Also called: journal submission, submission, submitting a manuscript, submission system, online submission system

Manuscript submission is the formal sending of a manuscript and its supporting files to a journal, usually through an online system that collects author details, statements and files and lets authors follow its progress. Once submitted, a paper must not be sent to another journal at the same time, which the ICMJE treats as duplicate submission.

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Manuscript transfer

Also called: cascading peer review, cascade, article transfer, transfer service, journal transfer

A manuscript transfer is the passing of a rejected submission, with the author's agreement, to another journal from the same publisher, often with its reviewer reports, so that the author need not start again. Taylor & Francis calls this a transfer or cascade service, and Wiley notes that reviewer reports sent on with a transfer are not published without the authors' and reviewers' consent.

Methodology chapter

Also called: methodology section, research methodology chapter

The methodology chapter is the part of a thesis or dissertation that describes and justifies how the research was designed and carried out, showing how the design and methods answer the research question. It usually goes further than a journal article's methods section, explaining why the approach was chosen as well as what was done.

Methods article

Also called: methodology article, methods paper, methodology paper

A methods article is a journal article that presents a new experimental method, test or procedure, or a better version of an existing one, and shows that it is a real advance on what is already available. Springer Nature lists methodologies among the main types of journal article.

Methods section

Also called: method section, materials and methods, methods and materials, methods chapter

The methods section is the part of a research paper that explains how the study was done, covering its design, participants or materials, measures, procedures and analysis, in enough detail for others to repeat it. APA Style heads it Method, and the ICMJE says it should hold only what was known when the protocol was written, leaving what was learned for the results.

Minor corrections

Also called: pass with minor corrections, minor corrections to a thesis

Minor corrections are small changes that examiners ask for after a viva on a thesis that already meets the standard, such as typing errors, clarifications, extra references or tighter arguments. At the University of Leeds, for example, the internal examiner approves them, with deadlines from a few weeks to a few months depending on their extent.

Minor revision

Also called: minor revisions, minor amendments, accept with minor revisions

Minor revision is an editorial decision that a manuscript can be published once a limited number of changes are made, such as clarifications, corrected figures or small errors. IOP Publishing notes the revised version is unlikely to go back to the reviewers and usually allows one to two weeks, though this varies by journal.

Monograph thesis

Also called: monograph-style thesis, traditional thesis, monograph format thesis

A monograph thesis is the traditional form of thesis, a single continuous work in chapters written by the candidate alone, typically moving from introduction and aims through methods to results and conclusions. The University of Sheffield, for example, offers it alongside a publication format thesis, and some sponsors allow only the monograph form.

Nominalisation

Also called: nominalization, nominalisations, nominalizations

Nominalisation is turning a verb or adjective into a noun, as in the discovery was made by the team instead of the team discovered. It is common in academic prose and can make writing concise, but the UNC Writing Center warns that too much of it hides who did what and makes the reader work harder to find the meaning.

Online first

Also called: early view, ahead of print, epub ahead of print, advance online publication, AOP, OnlineFirst

Online first is the publication of an article online, with a DOI, before it appears in a numbered journal issue, under names such as Early View at Wiley. Wiley's Early View articles are final and fully citable, but NISO notes that other early-release articles may be accepted manuscripts or proofs, so it is worth checking which version is online.

Open peer review

Also called: open review, OPR, signed peer review, open identities peer review

Open peer review is an umbrella term for peer review models that make parts of the process open, such as revealing reviewers' names to authors, publishing review reports or letting others comment. A systematic review by Tony Ross-Hellauer in 2017 found 122 definitions of the term, so a journal's own description of its model is the one to check.

Open science

Also called: open research, open scholarship

Open science is the set of principles and practices that aim to make research, and the way it is produced, openly available, accessible and reusable by everyone. UNESCO's Recommendation on Open Science, adopted in November 2021, counts publications, research data, educational resources, software and hardware as open scientific knowledge, alongside open infrastructures, science communication, the involvement of people outside research and dialogue with other knowledge systems.

ORCID

Also called: ORCID iD, Open Researcher and Contributor ID, ORCID identifier, ORCID number

ORCID, short for Open Researcher and Contributor ID, is a unique, persistent identifier, free to researchers, that tells one researcher apart from others with similar names and connects them to their work and affiliations. It is run by a not-for-profit organisation funded by member organisations, and the ICMJE encourages journals to list authors' ORCID iDs.

Original research article

Also called: original article, research article, research paper, primary research article

An original research article is a full report of a new study, the most common type of journal article, set out with introduction, methods, results and discussion sections. Springer Nature notes it may be called an original article, research article, research or simply article, depending on the journal.

Passive voice

Also called: passive, passive construction, passive sentence

The passive voice is a sentence form in which the receiver of an action comes first and the doer follows the verb or is left out, as in the samples were analysed rather than we analysed the samples. APA Style allows it but prefers the active voice, keeping the passive for when the receiver matters more, as in describing an experimental set-up.

Patchwriting

Also called: patch-writing, patch writing, patchwrite

Patchwriting is writing that copies a source and then changes it on the surface, by deleting words, altering grammar or swapping in synonyms, while keeping the original's structure. Rebecca Moore Howard, who named it, treats it as a stage in learning to write from sources rather than deliberate cheating, although writing handbooks commonly class paraphrase this close to the source as plagiarism.

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Peer reviewer

Also called: referee, reviewer, referees, reviewers, external reviewer, journal reviewer

A peer reviewer, or referee, is an independent expert whom an editor asks to assess a manuscript's methods, validity, originality and clarity and to advise whether it should be published. Taylor & Francis normally requires at least two for a research article, and the editor, not the reviewers, makes the decision.

PhD by published work

Also called: PhD by prior publication, doctorate by published work, retrospective PhD by publication, PhD by published works

A PhD by published work is a doctorate awarded for research already published, often before the candidate registers, submitted with a substantial commentary that links the works and argues for their coherence and significance, then defended at a viva. The QAA notes candidates may register for a shorter period or not at all, unlike a thesis by prospective publication.

Plain language summary

Also called: lay summary, plain English summary, PLS, plain-language summary

A plain language summary is a short account of a study written for members of the public, in everyday words with any technical terms explained, alongside the scientific abstract. The UK Health Research Authority asks research sponsors to include one in a study's final report, and publishes these summaries on its website next to its own summaries of each study.

Plan S

Also called: Plan S principles, cOAlition S policy

Plan S is an open access initiative of cOAlition S, a group of research funders, requiring that publications from their grants be open immediately, in open access journals, on open platforms or through repositories without embargo, under an open licence, preferably CC BY. It supports hybrid journals only as a transitional step within transformative arrangements.

Post-publication peer review

Also called: post publication peer review, PPPR, post-publication review

Post-publication peer review is assessment of a paper after it is published, by invited reviewers or by readers, through comments, reviews or discussion linked to the article. It usually adds to review before publication rather than replacing it, but some platforms, such as F1000Research, publish after basic checks and then invite named reviewers in the open.

Pre-submission enquiry

Also called: presubmission enquiry, pre-submission inquiry, presubmission inquiry, pre-submission letter

A pre-submission enquiry is a short message to a journal's editor, sent before submitting, that outlines a planned manuscript and asks whether the journal would consider it. Springer Nature suggests one when proposing a review article the journal has not invited, and BMJ Open asks for one before a communication article.

Preprint

Also called: pre-print, e-print, eprint, preprints

A preprint is a complete research manuscript that its authors post publicly on a preprint server before, or while, it is peer reviewed by a journal. ASAPbio notes it is usually online within a day or so without review, and the ICMJE asks that a cited preprint be labelled as one and replaced by the journal article once that appears.

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Preprint server

Also called: preprint repository, preprint archive, e-print archive

A preprint server is an online platform where researchers post preprints, such as arXiv or preprints.org, usually after only brief screening. The ICMJE advises choosing one that labels preprints as not peer reviewed, records funding and disclosures, keeps notices of withdrawn preprints and links each preprint to its published version.

Preregistration

Also called: pre-registration, study preregistration, preregistered study, pre-registered study, preregister

Preregistration is writing down a study's hypotheses, design and analysis plan and filing them with a public registry, such as the Open Science Framework, before the data are collected or examined. The Center for Open Science presents it as a way to separate planned, confirmatory analyses from unplanned, exploratory ones, and clinical trial registration applies the same idea to trials.

Press embargo

Also called: media embargo, news embargo, embargoed press release

A press embargo is an agreement under which journalists receive a research article or press release in advance on condition that they do not report it until a set time, usually the moment of publication. The ICMJE describes it as an honour system with no formal enforcement and, while noting criticism that it serves journals' interests, judges its benefits greater.

Proofreading

Also called: proof-reading, proofread, proofreader

Proofreading is the final check of a text for surface errors, such as spelling, punctuation, grammar, typing slips and layout, made after all other revision is done. The UNC Writing Center treats it as the last stage of editing, and in publishing the proofreader checks the typeset proof, the draft of the final layout, before it is released.

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Proofs

Also called: page proofs, galley proofs, galleys, author proofs, proof

Proofs are the typeset versions of an accepted article or book that the publisher produces, and sends to the author to check, before publication. The NISO recommendations count the copy-edited manuscript, galley proofs and page proofs as proof stages, and the corresponding author usually handles them for all the authors.

Recommendations section

Also called: recommendations, recommendations for action, recommendations for practice

Recommendations are specific proposals for action that follow from a study's findings, telling a practitioner, organisation or policy maker what should be done next, usually near the end of a report or thesis. The University of Reading's report-writing guide places recommendations for action, alongside suggestions for further research, within or next to the conclusions.

RECORD

Also called: RECORD statement, RECORD checklist, REporting of studies Conducted using Observational Routinely-collected health Data

RECORD, the REporting of studies Conducted using Observational Routinely-collected health Data, is an extension of STROBE for studies that use data collected for other purposes, such as health records and registries. Published in 2015, it adds a checklist of 13 items to the STROBE items.

Referral for resubmission

Also called: referral, referred thesis, referral for re-examination, revise and resubmit a thesis

Referral for resubmission is a viva outcome in which a thesis close to the required standard is returned to the candidate to revise, with any further work the examiners specify, and submit again for re-examination. At the University of Leeds a second viva may follow, a fail cannot be recommended without one, and a second referral is not allowed.

Registered report

Also called: registered reports, registered report format

A registered report is a journal article format in which the introduction and methods are peer reviewed before the data are collected, and a study that passes receives in-principle acceptance, so that publication does not depend on the results. The Center for Open Science lists over 300 journals using it, and it aims to remove publication bias against negative results.

Reject and resubmit

Also called: reject and encourage resubmission, rejected but may resubmit, decline with encouragement to resubmit, reject with invitation to resubmit

Reject and resubmit is an editorial decision that rejects a manuscript in its current form but invites the authors to send a substantially rewritten version, which is then handled as a new submission. IOP Publishing calls it rejected but may resubmit, and some editors prefer it to major revision when the work needed would take too long.

Relative Citation Ratio

Also called: RCR, iCite RCR

The Relative Citation Ratio is an article-level metric, developed at the US National Institutes of Health, that divides an article's citation rate by the rate expected for its field, where the field is defined by the articles cited alongside it. Its authors present it as an alternative to judging papers by their journal's impact factor, and the NIH's iCite tool calculates it.

Reporting guideline

Also called: reporting guidelines, reporting standard, reporting standards, reporting checklist

A reporting guideline is a checklist, flow diagram or structured text, developed by an explicit method, that lists the minimum information a paper about a particular type of study should report. The EQUATOR Network says it helps a paper to be understood, replicated, used in practice and included in systematic reviews, and the ICMJE encourages journals to ask authors to follow one.

Research highlights

Also called: highlights, article highlights

Research highlights are a short list of bullet points, published with an article, that state its main findings and any new methods. Elsevier journals ask for three to five of them, each no longer than 85 characters including spaces, written without jargon or abbreviations so that search engines and readers outside the field can pick them up.

Response to reviewers

Also called: response letter, rebuttal letter, point-by-point response, reply to reviewers, response to reviewers letter, author response

A response to reviewers is the document authors send with a revised manuscript that answers each reviewer and editor comment in turn, saying what was changed and where, or explaining courteously why a change was not made. Taylor & Francis suggests a two-column grid of comments and responses, and journals often want a copy of the manuscript with changes marked as well.

Responsible research assessment

Also called: responsible metrics, research assessment reform, responsible use of metrics

Responsible research assessment is evaluation of research and researchers based mainly on qualitative peer judgement of the full range of their work, supported by careful use of quantitative indicators rather than led by them. The Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment, whose signatories form the CoARA coalition, commits organisations to this approach.

Results section

Also called: results, results chapter

The results section is the part of a research report that presents what the study found, in a logical order with the main findings first, in text, tables and figures, without interpreting them. The ICMJE asks for data on every outcome named in the methods, and for absolute numbers alongside percentages, without repeating in the text everything the tables show.

Retraction notice

Also called: notice of retraction, retraction statement, retraction note

A retraction notice is the published statement that withdraws an article from the scholarly record, headed with the original article's title, explaining why it is retracted and linked to it in both directions. The ICMJE and Elsevier keep the retracted article online, marked as retracted in every form, so that readers can see what was withdrawn and why.

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Retraction Watch Database

Also called: Retraction Watch, Retraction Watch data

The Retraction Watch Database is a public record of retracted journal articles and their notices, built by the Center for Scientific Integrity, the organisation behind the Retraction Watch blog. Crossref acquired it in September 2023 and made it an open resource, with Retraction Watch continuing to keep it up to date and publishers still registering their own retractions.

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Review article

Also called: review paper, literature review article, invited review

A review article is a journal article that surveys and summarises published research on a topic to describe the current state of a field, rather than reporting new data. Springer Nature notes that editors often invite leading researchers to write them and that some journals do not consider unsolicited reviews, so a pre-submission enquiry is wise.

Reviewer report

Also called: referee report, review report, peer review report, reviewer comments, referee's report

A reviewer report is the written assessment a peer reviewer sends to the editor, setting out a manuscript's strengths and weaknesses and the changes needed, usually with a recommendation. The editor shares it with the authors alongside the decision, and in transparent peer review it is published with the accepted article.

Revise and resubmit

Also called: R&R, revise & resubmit, revise-and-resubmit

Revise and resubmit is an editorial decision inviting authors to revise a manuscript substantially and send it back for another round of review, with no promise of acceptance. Journals use the phrase differently: some mean a major revision of the same submission, while others treat the returned paper as a new submission.

Rights retention

Also called: rights retention strategy, RRS, author rights retention

Rights retention is an author's keeping enough rights in their own work to share it openly whatever a later publishing agreement says, typically by applying a CC BY licence to the accepted manuscript from submission. The cOAlition S strategy builds this into grant conditions, so that funded authors can publish in subscription journals and still deposit the manuscript at publication.

Running head

Also called: running header, running title

A running head is a shortened form of a paper's title printed at the top of every page. In APA 7 it is typed in capital letters, runs to no more than 50 characters including spaces and punctuation, and is required only in professional papers, so a student paper carries just the page number unless the instructor or institution asks for more.

SAGER guidelines

Also called: SAGER, Sex and Gender Equity in Research guidelines, SAGER checklist

The SAGER guidelines, Sex and Gender Equity in Research, set out how to report sex and gender in a study's design, analysis, results and interpretation. They were published in 2016 by Heidari and colleagues, and checklists for studies with and without human participants were added in 2022.

San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment

Also called: DORA, SF DORA, San Francisco Declaration

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, known as DORA, is a set of recommendations drawn up by editors and publishers at the American Society for Cell Biology's meeting in December 2012. Its central recommendation is not to use journal-based metrics such as the Journal Impact Factor to judge individual articles or scientists, or in hiring, promotion and funding decisions.

Scholarly monograph

Also called: academic monograph, monograph, research monograph, academic book

A scholarly monograph is a book-length study of a single subject by one or a few authors, published as a book rather than as articles. UKRI's open access policy covers monographs, book chapters and edited collections published from 1 January 2024, requiring them to be open within 12 months under a Creative Commons licence.

SCImago Journal Rank

Also called: SJR, SJR indicator

The SCImago Journal Rank is a journal prestige indicator calculated from Scopus data, in which a citation counts for more when it comes from a journal that is itself highly ranked. Described by González-Pereira and colleagues of the SCImago group, it uses eigenvector centrality over a three-year citation window.

Self-archiving

Also called: self archiving, repository deposit, depositing in a repository

Self-archiving is an author's deposit of a copy of their work, usually the accepted manuscript of an article, in an open repository so that anyone can read it. The Budapest Open Access Initiative of 2002 named it as one of two routes to open access, alongside open access journals, and it is what makes an article green open access.

Self-citation

Also called: self citation, author self-citation, journal self-citation, self-citations

A self-citation is a citation in which authors cite their own earlier work, or a journal cites articles it published itself. Metrics treat it differently: the h-index includes self-citations, CWTS reports a journal's self-citation percentage beside SNIP, and SAGE warns editors about reviewers who ask authors to cite the reviewers' own papers.

Short communication

Also called: short report, brief communication, short paper

A short communication is a brief journal article reporting original findings that are time-sensitive or likely to interest many researchers and to prompt further work. Springer Nature groups short reports and letters as this type, suited to results that must appear quickly, as in highly competitive or fast-moving fields.

Signposting

Also called: signposts, signposting language, signpost words, signpost phrases

Signposting is the use of words and phrases that tell the reader where an argument is going, such as this chapter examines, in contrast or as discussed above. The University of York divides it into major signposting, which announces a text's purpose and structure, and linking words and phrases, which connect one point to the next.

Single-anonymous peer review

Also called: single-anonymised peer review, single-anonymized peer review, single-blind peer review, single-blind review, single blind peer review

Single-anonymous peer review is peer review in which the reviewers know who the authors are but the authors are not told who the reviewers are. Wiley and Taylor & Francis describe it as the commonest model in science and medicine journals, and publishers now say anonymous or anonymised where they once said blind.

SNIP

Also called: source normalised impact per paper, source normalized impact per paper, source normalized impact per publication

SNIP, the source normalised impact per paper, is a journal metric from Scopus data that corrects a journal's citations per paper over three years for how heavily its field cites, so that a citation from a publication with a long reference list counts for less. It was developed by Henk Moed in 2009 and revised in 2012, and CWTS at Leiden University publishes it.

Special issue

Also called: themed issue, theme issue, thematic issue, special series, special collection

A special issue is a journal issue, or online collection, devoted to one theme, often put together by guest editors who invite or select the papers. The ICMJE says the journal's editor must keep full responsibility for its policies, reviewers and content, especially when it has outside funding or guest editors.

SPIRIT

Also called: SPIRIT statement, SPIRIT 2025, SPIRIT checklist, Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials

SPIRIT, Standard Protocol Items: Recommendations for Interventional Trials, is the reporting guideline for trial protocols, updated as SPIRIT 2025 with a 34-item checklist and a figure. It covers what a protocol should state before a trial begins, and it is the companion of CONSORT, which covers the report of the results.

SQUIRE

Also called: SQUIRE 2.0, SQUIRE guidelines, Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence

SQUIRE, the Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Excellence, is the reporting guideline for systematic efforts to improve the quality, value and safety of health care, updated as SQUIRE 2.0 in 2015 with 18 items. It stresses the use of theory, the context in which the work is done and the study of the intervention.

SRQR

Also called: Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research, SRQR checklist

SRQR, the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research, is a 21-item reporting guideline for qualitative studies of any approach, published by O'Brien and colleagues in 2014 from a synthesis of earlier recommendations. It is broader than COREQ, which is limited to studies using interviews and focus groups.

STARD

Also called: STARD 2015, STARD statement, STARD checklist, Standards for the Reporting of Diagnostic accuracy studies

STARD is the reporting guideline for diagnostic accuracy studies, which compare a test with a reference standard, updated as STARD 2015 with a list of 30 essential items and a flow diagram. It has extensions for abstracts, for studies of dementia and, since 2025, for diagnostic accuracy studies using artificial intelligence.

Strengths and limitations section

Also called: limitations section, strengths and limitations of this study, study limitations section, strengths and weaknesses section

A strengths and limitations section is the part of a paper that sets out what the study's design does well and where it falls short, so that readers can weigh the findings. Most journals expect it within the discussion, while BMJ Open asks for a box of no more than five bullet points after the abstract, about the methods rather than the results.

STROBE

Also called: STROBE statement, STROBE checklist, Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology

STROBE, Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology, is the reporting guideline for cohort, case-control and cross-sectional studies, published in 2007 as a 22-item checklist with a version for each design. Extensions such as STREGA for genetic association studies and RECORD for routinely collected data build on it.

Structured abstract

Also called: structured abstracts, labelled abstract

A structured abstract is an abstract divided into labelled parts, such as Background, Methods, Results and Conclusions, so that a reader can find each element at a glance. The ICMJE asks for one on original research, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, and because the labels vary between journals, authors use the headings their target journal sets.

Style guide

Also called: style manual, manual of style, stylebook, style book

A style guide is a published set of rules for writing and presenting text, such as spelling, punctuation, capitals, numbers, headings and citations, used to make work consistent. Field-wide manuals include the MLA Handbook and The Chicago Manual of Style, a publisher's in-house guide adds its own preferences, and a style sheet records the choices made for one manuscript.

Style sheet

Also called: editorial style sheet, style sheet for a manuscript

A style sheet is a running record, kept by an author or copy-editor for one manuscript, of decisions that no manual settles, such as particular spellings, capitals, hyphenation and names, so that they are applied the same way throughout. The MLA notes that copy-editors at a publishing house generally create one for each manuscript.

Subject repository

Also called: disciplinary repository, subject-based repository, discipline repository

A subject repository is an open archive for research in one discipline or group of disciplines, such as arXiv, as opposed to an institutional repository run by one university. Researchers can use either kind to make their work green open access, and UKRI accepts deposit in both.

Submitted manuscript under review

Also called: SMUR, submitted manuscript, submitted version, manuscript under review

A submitted manuscript under review is the version of an article that is going through formal peer review at a journal, prepared to the publisher's submission requirements. NISO named this stage to mark the author's formal handing of responsibility to a publisher, and it may be revised several times before a decision.

Subscribe to Open

Also called: S2O, subscribe-to-open model

Subscribe to Open is a model in which institutions' continuing annual subscription fees are used collectively to make a paywalled journal open access. ESAC names it among the transitional arrangements that, alongside transformative agreements, move journals towards open access.

Summarising

Also called: summarizing, summary, summarise, summarize, summarising sources

Summarising is restating the main ideas of a source in one's own words, much more briefly than the original, with a citation to show where they came from. The Purdue OWL distinguishes it from paraphrasing, which restates a single passage only slightly condensed, and from quotation, which reproduces the exact words.

When to paraphrase, quote or summarise

Supervisor

Also called: thesis supervisor, dissertation supervisor, doctoral supervisor, PhD supervisor, dissertation advisor, thesis advisor, principal supervisor, lead supervisor

A supervisor is the academic who guides a research student through the project and thesis, advising on design, progress and writing and usually reading drafts. In the United States the role is usually called an advisor, and the QAA describes the supervisor as fundamental to a doctoral candidate's support and progress.

Supervisory team

Also called: supervisory panel, supervision team

A supervisory team is the group of academics who share the supervision of a research student, led by a principal or lead supervisor. The QAA's statement on doctoral degrees promotes supervisory teams both to support candidates and to give newer supervisors experience alongside established ones.

Supplementary material

Also called: supplementary materials, supplemental material, supporting information, online supplement, supplementary data, supplementary files

Supplementary material is extra content published online with an article but outside its main text, such as additional tables, figures, data files, questionnaires or code. The ICMJE asks that it be submitted and peer reviewed together with the manuscript, and a journal may publish it only in the electronic version.

Synthesis (in writing)

Also called: synthesising sources, synthesizing sources, source synthesis, synthesis of sources

Synthesis, in academic writing, is combining several sources to show how they agree, differ or build on one another and to reach a conclusion that none of them states alone. The Purdue OWL contrasts it with summary, which restates sources without new insight, and the UNC Writing Center notes that a literature review usually needs both.

Thesis

Also called: doctoral thesis, PhD thesis, research thesis

A thesis is the extended written account of an independent research project submitted for a degree, most often a doctorate. UK universities usually call the doctoral work a thesis and a taught degree's project a dissertation, while US universities usually call the doctoral work a dissertation, and the QAA notes a doctoral thesis may run to 100,000 words in discursive subjects.

Thesis by publication

Also called: PhD by publication, thesis by papers, article-based thesis, thesis by compilation, thesis with publications, publication format thesis, paper-based thesis, compilation thesis

A thesis by publication is a thesis built around the candidate's own papers, published, accepted or ready for submission, joined by an introduction, linking text and a concluding discussion that make them one coherent contribution. Rules on the number of papers and co-authorship differ between universities, and the candidate must state their own share of each paper.

Thesis corrections

Also called: post-viva corrections, thesis amendments

Thesis corrections are the changes examiners require after a viva before a thesis passes, called minor or major according to their extent and the time allowed. The QAA notes that universities define these differently, that three to six months for minor and six to twelve months for major changes are not uncommon, and that the award itself does not record them.

Thesis defence

Also called: thesis defense, dissertation defence, dissertation defense, PhD defence, PhD defense, public defence, oral defense, doctoral defence

A thesis defence is an oral examination in which a candidate presents and defends a thesis or dissertation. In the United States it is held before the dissertation committee, and in some other European countries it is a public ceremony whose outcome is usually already known, unlike the closed UK viva, where the result is not revealed in advance.

Thesis examiner

Also called: examiner, PhD examiner, doctoral examiner, dissertation examiner

A thesis examiner is an academic appointed to read a thesis, write an independent report on it, question the candidate in the oral examination and then recommend an outcome to the university. The QAA notes examiners are chosen for their expertise in the candidate's topic, and UK doctorates have at least one internal and one external examiner.

Thesis statement

Also called: central claim, main claim, working thesis, thesis sentence

A thesis statement is the sentence, usually near the end of an essay's introduction, that states the writer's main claim or position, which the rest of the paper sets out to support. The UNC Writing Center says it should answer the question asked, take a position others could dispute and be specific enough to pass the so what test.

Think. Check. Submit.

Also called: Think Check Submit, TCS checklist

Think. Check. Submit. is an initiative, launched by a coalition of scholarly publishing organisations, that gives researchers a checklist for judging whether a journal can be trusted before submitting to it. Taylor & Francis supports it as a guard against journals without proper peer review, and the Directory of Open Access Journals, one of its founders, chairs its committee.

Third-party proofreading

Also called: proofreading policy, third party proofreader, professional proofreading, third-party proofreader

Third-party proofreading is proofreading of a student's assessed work by someone else, such as a friend, relative or paid service, which universities allow only within set limits, and in some assessments not at all. The University of Nottingham's rule lets a proofreader point out errors and unclear passages but not add, cut or rewrite content, check calculations or correct facts, and students must declare it.

TIDieR

Also called: TIDieR checklist, Template for Intervention Description and Replication

TIDieR, the Template for Intervention Description and Replication, is a 12-item checklist for describing an intervention in enough detail for others to replicate it, covering its name, rationale, materials, procedures, who delivered it, how, where, when and how much, tailoring, modifications, and how well it was delivered, as planned and in practice. It extends the intervention items of CONSORT and SPIRIT.

Title page

Also called: cover page, title sheet

A title page is the first page of a paper or thesis, carrying its title, the author's name and affiliation and other identifying details. An APA 7 student title page adds the course, the instructor and the due date, a professional one adds an author note and a running head, and a journal title page often also gives a word count and sources of funding.

Common APA 7 formatting mistakes

Topic sentence

Also called: topic sentences, paragraph topic sentence

A topic sentence is the sentence, usually the first of a paragraph, that states the paragraph's main point, its controlling idea, and connects it to the paper's thesis. The UNC Writing Center notes it can come in the middle or at the end instead, as long as the reader can tell what the paragraph is about.

Toulmin model

Also called: Toulmin method, Toulmin argument, Toulmin model of argument, Toulmin model of argumentation

The Toulmin model is a way of analysing an argument, devised by the philosopher Stephen Toulmin, into six parts: the claim, the grounds or evidence, the warrant that links them, and, where needed, backing, a qualifier and a rebuttal. Writers use it to test whether a claim's evidence really supports it and to acknowledge limits and opposing views.

Tracked changes

Also called: track changes, tracked-changes version, redline manuscript, marked-up copy, revision marks

Tracked changes is a word-processing feature that records each insertion and deletion, with the reviser's name, until someone accepts or rejects it. Journals often ask for a revised manuscript with the changes marked, and the marks stay in a file even after tracking is turned off, so they must be accepted or rejected before a clean copy is submitted.

Mechanics QA

Transformative agreement

Also called: read and publish agreement, read-and-publish deal, publish and read agreement, transitional agreement

A transformative agreement is a contract between a publisher and a library or consortium that turns spending on subscriptions into payment for open access publishing by the institution's authors, usually with reading access included. ESAC describes it as an umbrella term for such deals, and UKRI calls approved ones transitional agreements.

Transition words

Also called: transitions, transitional phrases, linking words, linking phrases, connectives, transitional expressions

Transition words are words and phrases, such as however, therefore or in contrast, that show how one sentence, paragraph or section relates to the next. The UNC Writing Center describes them as signs telling readers how to piece ideas together, and they are one kind of signposting, the kind that links neighbouring points rather than announcing structure.

Transparent peer review

Also called: published peer review, transparent review

Transparent peer review is a model in which the reviewer reports, the authors' responses and the editors' decision letters are published alongside an accepted article, while the reviewers may stay anonymous. Wiley notes it works with single- or double-anonymous review and that authors may opt out at submission.

Triple-anonymous peer review

Also called: triple-anonymised peer review, triple-anonymized peer review, triple-blind peer review, triple-blind review

Triple-anonymous peer review is peer review in which the identities of the authors, the editors and the reviewers are all hidden, one step beyond double-anonymous review, which hides only authors and reviewers from each other. Wiley lists it alongside the other anonymised models.

TRIPOD

Also called: TRIPOD+AI, TRIPOD statement, Transparent Reporting of a multivariable prediction model for Individual Prognosis Or Diagnosis

TRIPOD, Transparent Reporting of a multivariable prediction model for Individual Prognosis Or Diagnosis, is the reporting guideline for studies that develop or evaluate a prediction model, first published in 2015. Its 2024 update, TRIPOD+AI, has 27 items, covers models built by regression or machine learning, and replaces the 2015 checklist.

Unstructured abstract

Also called: unstructured abstracts, non-structured abstract, single-paragraph abstract

An unstructured abstract is an abstract written as one continuous paragraph without section labels, still covering the problem, method, main results and conclusion in that order. APA Style uses this form, one unindented paragraph of usually no more than 250 words, whereas a structured abstract sets out the same content under labelled headings.

Verb tense in research writing

Also called: tense in academic writing, verb tense, which tense to use in a research paper

Verb tense in research writing follows conventions for each part of a paper. APA Style recommends the past or present perfect when describing earlier research and one's own procedure, the past for reporting results, and the present for discussing implications and stating conclusions, limitations and future directions, used consistently within nearby paragraphs.

Version of record

Also called: VoR, published version, publisher's version, final published version, publisher PDF, definitive version

The version of record is the final, fixed version of an article that a publisher formally declares published, whether in an issue or online first, and that can be cited through a permanent identifier. NISO notes it is also called the published or definitive version, and that later corrections or additions create a corrected or enhanced version of record.

Viva voce

Also called: viva, oral examination, PhD viva, thesis viva, viva examination

A viva voce, usually shortened to viva, is the oral examination in which a doctoral candidate defends the thesis before examiners, normally at least one internal and one external. In the UK it is usually closed, with only the candidate, examiners and perhaps an independent chair or an observing supervisor present, and it also checks that the thesis is the candidate's own work.

Word limit

Also called: word count limit, maximum word count, word range, word count rules, word count

A word limit is the maximum length set for an assignment, thesis or journal article, together with rules on what counts towards it. SOAS University of London, for example, counts headings, in-text citations, quotations and footnotes but not the bibliography or contents lists, and the ICMJE's journal word count leaves out the abstract, tables, figure legends and references.

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