Scientific literature comprises scholarly publications that report original empirical and theoretical work in the natural and social sciences, and within an academic field, often abbreviated as the literature.

Primary research articles (aka “original research articles” or just “research articles”) – These are your standard scientific articles.  Most often published in peer reviewed journals, primary research articles report on the findings of a scientists work.  They will almost always include a description of how the research was done and what the results mean. 

Review articles – They are published in peer reviewed journals, but seek to synthesize and summarize the work of a particular sub-field, rather than report on new results.  Review articles will often lack a “Materials and Methods” section.

Editorials/Opinion/Commentary/Perspectives – An article expressing the author's view about a particular issue.    These articles can be well researched and include a lot of citations to the peer reviewed literature, or simple items without citations.

Trade publication articles – Between the standard scholarly journals (Nature, Journal of the American Chemical Society) and the popular publications (Time, Newsweek, Scientific American) lie the Trade publications.  These publications are often aimed at medical professionals (Vaccine Weekly) or particular disciplines (Chemical and Engineering News).

News – Science news articles can be found in a wide variety of publications.  Popular newspapers and magazines, trade publications and scholarly publications can all have science news articles.  These articles often will refer to a recent study published as a primary research article.

Blog posts – Blogs can be a great way to get involved in the scientific community, and many scientific blog posts can point you back to the peer reviewed literature. 

Article comments (formal, reviewed) – Traditionally, if you had a criticism of a published journal article, you submitted a formal comment.  These short pieces would be reviewed by editors or possibly peer-reviewers, and published in a subsequent journal issue. 

Article comments (online, with or without moderation) – Since one of the problems with formal article comments is slow turnaround time, many online journal systems have the ability to allow users to comment directly on the articles. 

Technical Reports – Government agencies and NGO’s often do scientific work. The reports they produce are not often peer reviewed, but can be an important part of the scientific literature. These reports can be found in scholarly databases and on the web, and are classified by some as grey literature (see below).

Pre-print/Post-print – A pre-print is simply a journal article in its original form, before it is peer reviewed or typeset by a journal. Often considered gray literature (see below)

Field Trip guides – More common in geology than in other scientific disciplines, these guides are often considered a part of the grey literature. 

Gray literature – The term “gray literature” largely refers to items that are distributed or published outside of the traditional journal and book publishers.

Maps – Thematic maps can be an important part of many scientific disciplines.  They can be published as standalone publications, supplements to journal articles or books, or parts of technical reports from government agencies or NGO’s. 

Conference proceedings – long papers – Other than journal articles (and the related bits) conferences are the second major form of formal communication among scientists. At these conferences scientists may stand up at the front of the room and give a PowerPoint presentation.  Or they may stand in front of a 3 foot by 6 foot poster describing their work.  Sometimes, they will write up a formal paper explaining the same thing they did at the conference in a bit more detail.  These papers can be published in book form in a volume referred to as the “Proceedings of Conference X.”  Sometimes these papers will go through peer review, and sometimes they won’t.

Conference proceedings – abstracts – More often, the research presented as posters or PowerPoint presentations at a conference won’t have a formal write up published after the fact.  Often the only record of the presentation will be the brief description (abstract) of their presentation that the scientists submitted to the conference organizers.  

Books (including reference materials like handbooks and dictionaries) –  Most scientific books cannot be considered ‘primary research’.  In general, they describe and interpret the primary research published in the journal articles. 

Book series (sometimes called “Special Papers”) – These can be confusing.  In some fields, these book series publish individual chapters that could be considered primary research articles.  These individual chapters are cited and indexed individually.  In addition, these items can sometimes look a lot like journals – they may have volume numbers and a series title that looks like a journal title.

Dissertations/Theses – These are the final products that result from research conducted for a PhD or a Masters degree. While they undergo exhaustive review by academic advisers and committee members, they wouldn’t be considered “peer-reviewed”.

Information adapted from: Swoger, B (n.d.) 'Types of scientific information', The undergraduate science librarian, viewed March 15, 2017 at https://undergraduatesciencelibrarian.org/a-very-brief-introduction-to-the-scientific-literature/types-of-scientific-literature/

Abstract: summary of the article

Introduction: background information and a description of the author’s purpose  

Materials & Methods: how the study was performed with enough detail so that other scientists could repeat the study  

Discussion: a description of what the findings mean and their implications; address potential criticisms

Results: includes new observations, data and findings