What is publication?
In a general sense, the term publication refers to a scholarly article published by researchers, professors, or field experts. Journal articles are not for the general public, these are for field-specific people. basically, a researcher conducts research, survey, case study, or review and submits it to a publisher and then after review, they publish the article. In this post, we will not go into deeper about journal publication or how we can write a journal article for publication, rather we will discuss the importance of journal articles in getting a master's or Ph.D. scholarship. Therefore, let's read Is publication important for scholarship application?
The below topics will be covered in this post-
Basic types of journal articles
There are many types of journal articles such as review articles, research articles, surveys, case studies, editorial publications, mini-review, comprehensive reviews, and so on. However, for students review and research articles are most popular. A review article is an article where a researcher reviews several previously published research and shows the progress of that topic in the scientific world. For example, suppose someone wants to write a review article on the progress of nuclear energy in the USA. To do that, he has to collect at least all the important published papers of the last 10 years and make a summary of those papers in his article and discuss what progress did the USA make in the nuclear sector in those 10 years. Only making a summary does not end up writing a good review article, the author also needs to put his own understanding and thoughts on that and needs to make some conclusions based on the previously published papers. If you follow the highlighted part of the below abstract of a review article, you will understand how the author mentioned his finding regarding the limitation and needs of the discussed topic. This is what actually we need to do in a review article.
Is publication important for scholarship application?
Among several parameters, one parameter on which the admission and scholarship committee put a lot of weight is publication. Many of us, sometimes get a rejection from good-ranked universities or scholarships because of not having quality publication or publications. A large part of the higher study consists of research or project. Therefore, it is obvious that the admission committee would prefer someone who already has some previous knowledge of research. Another reason is that the universities always try to maintain their quality and ranking and to keep their ranking high, they want students and professors to conduct quality research. Further, many of us do not know that published articles can compensate for our low CGPA in many cases. Admission and scholarship are holistic processes. The admission committee looks at the overall profile of the applicant. Therefore, if you have good journals published, sometimes they may prefer the journal articles over CGPA.
How admission committee evaluates the publications?
Answering this question is not easy. there are many ways in which publications are evaluated. However, one of the common methods is that- they score the journal articles on the basis of several parameters. Consider, they score 3 for an article published in a good journal and the applicant is the first author of the article. They score 2 for an article published in a good journal but the applicant is the second or the third author of the paper. And a score of 1 for an author serial after 3. Sometimes the committee gives a fixed point to the applicant who has quality publications, which directly helps the applicant to stand out among thousands of students.
Merits of a quality publication
Having good publications listed on your CV enhances your profile, which will help you to stand out among many applicants while applying for a scholarship or job. Besides, there are many prestigious scholarships that largely depend on publications. Scholarships like SINGA, RTP in Australia, and MIS in Malaysia completely depend on publications, where the application requirement is that you have to have a certain number of quality publications. Since many of the applicants do not have publications, therefore, these are easy to get scholarships for students who have some quality publications.
Demerits of poor publication
Having a poor-quality publication or an article published in a low-grade journal will decrease the potential of your profile in front of the admission and scholarship committee. It is like that not knowing something is better than knowing something wrong. Therefore, it is strongly advised not to show poor-quality publications in your CV and do not mention this anywhere in your application.
A series of posts on publication including how to write a quality publication, where to publish them, how to find out high-grade journals, and details of quality conference proceedings are coming soon. So, stay tuned.