Impressive numbers: In an article from the newspaper "Die Zeit" by Stefan Schmitt and Stefanie Schramm (published: Die Zeit, no.1, 27 December 2013) impressive numbers have been published. Schmitt and Schramm write that, today, there are approximately seven billion researchers whose articles have been published in over 30,000 specialist journals. "[…] According to a count by Nature, 1.4 million papers are published within one year - that is 3,850 papers a day. […]". There is no better way to describe the information flood which junior researchers are facing today.

Although Peer Review (please continue reading the pages on the right) and the Impact Factor for journals have partly been subject to controversy, there are no other quality criteria for scientific publications available to date.

The Peer Review process is anonymous!

At least two reviewers from the field will evaluate the manuscript according to the following criteria:

• Is it an original paper?
• Does the key proposition of the manuscript contribute an important and innovative aspect to the state of the art?
• Did the author respect the rules of the "Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice" paper of the German Research Foundation (DFG)?

This evaluation is followed by a summary of the experts' assessments. The summary also contains the decision whether the manuscript will be published in the journal. In case of discrepancies between the two reviews, a third reviewer is asked to evaluate the manuscript.

In order to guarantee the quality of scientific publications, Peer Review is being conducted in many journals.

What does Science Citation Index and Impact Factor mean? (PDF) [in German]

An original paper is a publication containing unpublished data, graphics and findings. An original publication contains the sections introduction, material and methods, results and discussion, which can vary depending on the rules of the publisher. It is also possible that an original contains graphics from a dissertation or habilitation which has already been published. The graphic is usually accompanied by a text or a footnote explaining when and where the graphic has been published before.