There are essentially 3 main categories:

• Generalist top journals: Science and Nature alone constitute a criterion of the Shanghai Ranking. They are essentially strategic for the evaluation of a research unit.

• General disciplinary journals: e. g. Physical Review Letters, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Surveys in Geophysics. Here, the title contains a word or phrase suggesting this generality: Review, Current Opinion, Survey. It can be newspapers that include mainly or even only reviews.

• Specialized journals: they contain almost exclusively research articles as such.

Proceedings of congresses can be found in the second or more often in the third category.

These journals are essentially of a strategic nature: to publish in them on an occasional basis allows an already highly rated team to enhance the value of its activity.

Science and Nature account for 20% in the Shanghai criteria

Sometimes, only one or two articles per issue are truly exceptional and motivate the excellence of the journal; many, on the other hand, are never cited.

A Research Article is a written paper that illustrates an outcome of scientific research. It is written by and for researchers for the purpose of making specific findings known to the scientific community at large.

Newspapers publishing Research Articles account for the majority of the entire scientific publication landscape. They are the real tools of the researchers' daily work. Their impact bibliometric factor is often moderate or even low, unlike many journals publishing reviews.

On the other hand, a Review is a text that reflects the state of the art of an issue at a given moment: who is working on what, using what method, with what results and what are the prospects for the future?

The Reviews usually provide a very extensive bibliography that allows you to "clear" a field at the beginning of the research.

Newspapers publishing mostly or solely Reviews are, for this reason, very frequently cited in research articles; as a result, they significantly skew bibliometric impact factors.

We see on these extracts of the JCR 2013 the typology of 3 journals, useful to know according to the needs of the future publisher

The index described in the lower right portion of the diagram (Ratio...) shows that for a given subject (e.g.: impact of climate change on plant disease) the proportion of Reviews is in excess vs. Significant Research Articles

Follows the methodology for writing a Review article by M. Pautasso (2013)

DURAND-BARTHEZ, Manuel. "To publish one's work in Science - Technology - Medicine". UBL (Université Bretagne Loire). Formadoct. Rennes : UBL, déc. 2015. Disp. sur : http://guides-formadoct.u-bretagneloire.fr/publier_STM