In Nature journals, original research is published either as an Article, Letter, Resource (presents a large dataset of broad usefulness, interest and significance) Brief Communication or Technical Report.

Nature does not publish the Brief Communication, Resource or Technical Report format. In Nature, there are fewer Articles published per week (typically around 3) than there are Letters (typically around 17). Some, but not all, Articles and Letters are published online before they appear in the print edition of the journal (AOP, or Advance Online Publication). The Nature guide to authors provides detailed information about these categories.

In the Nature monthly journals, research is published as Articles, all of which are published online ahead of the print editions. Some, but not all of the monthly journals publish research in Letter, Resource, Brief Communication or Technical Report format. Each journal describes the content type it publishes in its own guide to authors.

Full papers

Full papers contain original and significant work that is likely to be of wide general appeal or exceptional interest in its specialised area. However, work that has appeared in print in a short form such as an NJC Letter or Chemical communication is normally acceptable.

Letters

NJC Letters are concise articles that report results of immediate interest to the chemistry community; they may be complete publications, though a subsequent paper may be justified, and should contain a brief experimental section.

Perspectives

Perspectives are brief reviews giving the personal viewpoint of a leading scientist in their area of research, setting it in the context of the work of others and looking forward to future developments.

In some cases, pairs of collaborating scientists from different disciplines are invited to each give their perspective on their common field of research in order to demonstrate the benefits of collaborative research and facilitate dialogue between communities.

The majority of Perspectives are invited by the editorial office, however suggestions of suitable Perspectives in the form of a brief synopsis and biography of the author, are welcome.

Focus

Focus articles centre on a specific topic, giving a personal view and a critical evaluation of the current state of knowledge. These short articles summarise the key results, the work currently being done, the challenges ahead and how the field is evolving.

以下来自维基百科：

There are several types of journal articles; the exact terminology and definitions vary by field and specific journal, but often include:

• Letters (also called communications, and not to be confused with letters to the editor) are short descriptions of important current research findings that are usually fast-tracked for immediate publication because they are considered urgent.
• Research notes are short descriptions of current research findings that are considered less urgent or important than Letters.
• Articles are usually between five and twenty pages and are complete descriptions of current original research findings, but there are considerable variations between scientific fields and journals – 80-page articles are not rare in mathematics or theoretical computer science.
• Supplemental articles contain a large volume of tabular data that is the result of current research and may be dozens or hundreds of pages with mostly numerical data. Some journals now only publish this data electronically on the Internet.
• Review articles do not cover original research but rather accumulate the results of many differentarticles on a particular topic into a coherent narrative about the state of the art in that field. Review articles provide information about the topic and also provide journal references to the original research. Reviews may be entirely narrative, or may provide quantitative summary estimates resulting from the application of meta-analytical methods.
• Data papers are articles dedicated to describe datasets. This type of article is becoming popular and journals exclusively dedicated to them have been established, e.g. Scientific Data and Earth System Science Data.
• Video papers are a recent addition to practice of scientific publications. They most often combine an online video demonstration of a new technique or protocol combined with a rigorous textual description.^[2]

The formats of journal articles vary, but many follow the general IMRAD scheme recommended by theInternational Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Such articles begin with an abstract, which is a one-to-four-paragraph summary of the paper. The introduction describes the background for the research including a discussion of similar research. The materials and methods or experimental section provides specific details of how the research was conducted. The results and discussion section describes the outcome and implications of the research, and the conclusion section places the research in context and describes avenues for further exploration.

In addition to the above, some scientific journals such as Science will include a news section where scientific developments (often involving political issues) are described. These articles are often written by science journalists and not by scientists. In addition, some journals will include an editorial section and a section for letters to the editor. While these are articles published within a journal, in general they are not regarded as scientific journal articles because they have not been peer-reviewed.

关于影响因子的举例，来自Advances in Computer Science : an International Journal：

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

"The impact factor (IF) of an academic journal is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, the founder of the Institute for Scientific Information. Impact factors are calculated yearly starting from 1975 for those journals that are indexed in the Journal Citation Reports.
In any given year, the impact factor of a journal is the average number of citations received per paper published in that journal during the two preceding years. For example, if a journal has an impact factor of 3 in 2008, then its papers published in 2006 and 2007 received 3 citations each on average in 2008. The 2008 impact factor of a journal would be calculated as follows:

    2008 impact factor = A/B.

where:

    A = the number of times that all items published in that journal in 2006 and 2007 were cited by indexed publications during 2008.
    B = the total number of "citable items" published by that journal in 2006 and 2007. ("Citable items" for this calculation are usually articles, reviews, proceedings, or notes; not editorials or letters to the editor). "


Alternative Impact Factor

Several journal metrics are calculated. The first metric is an alternative impact factor which is based on Google Scholar's citation count.
The journal impact factor (JIF) normally referred to is the proprietary journal impact factor from Thomson Reuters calculated based on the Web of Science (WOS) and published in the Journal Citation Reports® (JCR). We call this the JCR®JIF. DOAJ writes: "There is only one official, universally recognised impact factor that is generated by Thomson Reuters; it is a proprietary measure run by a profit making organisation. It runs against the ethics and principles of open access." This journal has no JCR®JIF, but an alternative Google-based impact factor.

A = cites to articles published in 2013 - 2014 = 132
B = number of articles published in 2013 - 2014 = 165
Impact Factor for 2013 - 2014 = A/B = 132/165 = 0.8 (Google Scholar citations, data October 22, 2015)

Please see also the List of Citations for ACSIJ:
ACSIJ Google Scholar Profile

其他方面的参考资料：

Scholarly paper（Categories of papers） 刊载在《Academic publishing》维基百科方面的解释

Journal Citation Reports® 来自于汤森路透(Thomson Reuters)公司的引用统计报告（其公司的报告被认为是较为权威的评判论文与期刊质量的报告）

Top 100 Materials Scientists, 2000-10, Ranked by Citation Impact 来自Science Watch的论文引用统计