What standards are set for scientific publications?

Each field has some set standards for its publications. Scientific publications also have their own structures, which must be and are respected not only in Europe, but all over the world.

What are these rules?

  1. Text structure
    A longer scientific text should be divided into coherent and highlighted information units. This division has a hierarchical character – larger compositions contain smaller elements.Individual units of this structure are appropriately formatted with subheadings.

  2. Citations
    There are two types of quoting other works. The first one is to refer to the text without literal quotation, the second – to literally quote a fragment of the text.

  3. Punctuation and spelling
    All rules of punctuation and spelling characteristic for the language of publication should be kept.

  4. Tables and drawings
    It is necessary to number all tables and figures present in the work with Arabic numerals in the order in which they appear the first time in the text

  5. Bibliography
    Each citation of another work is provided in the text with the relevant reference to the cited work. The list of quoted literature can be found at the end of the text in the section titled Bibliography.


There are also standards as to the bibliographic style of the publication. The most popular is the Chicago style of bibliography. The Chicago Manual of Style, otherwise known as TCMOS CMOS/CMS, is a style of text editing, which was first used in 1890 by students of the University of Chicago and is included in the so-called Harvard styles. Chicago style is very popular in historical publications. The bibliographic description in this style has the following rules:
– The title “Bibliography” is centered
– The inscriptions are arranged in alphabetical order
– Subsequent inscriptions have a gap of two lines between them
– The first line of each inscription is aligned to the left margin, and each subsequent verse has a space of five spaces from the left margin
– The bibliography is at the very end of the entire text
– Bibliography format: Name of the author of the book, First name, Second name, Book title, Publisher, Date of issue

There are plenty of styles and standards – everyone will find something for themselves and they depend primarily on the country and university where the publication was written. All of them are, to a large extent, based on a few main principles that allow us to systematize the aesthetics of publications.

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