A glossary of journal production terms

Abstract

A summary of the article, carried separately from the body so that indexes and search results can show it without the full text. Often structured into labelled parts - background, methods, results, conclusions - which is worth preserving rather than flattening into one paragraph.

Affiliation

The institution an author belongs to. It attaches to the author rather than to the article, which matters: an article with four authors at three institutions has three affiliations linked individually, not a list under the names.

Article processing charge

A fee charged to the author or their funder to publish an open-access article, in place of charging the reader. Abbreviated APC.

Citation style

The convention a journal uses for formatting references and in-text citations - which parts appear, in what order, with what punctuation. A journal has exactly one, and a reference list in a near-miss of it looks like carelessness.

Colophon

The block on an article's first page carrying the facts about its publication: the licence, the copyright line, the dates it was received and accepted, the corresponding author, the DOI.

Copy-editing

Correcting the words - grammar, consistency, house style, clarity. Distinct from typesetting, which is about the page, and normally finished before an article is set.

Corresponding author

The author nominated to handle correspondence about the article, before and after publication. Marked as such in the article's metadata, not only in a footnote.

Crossref

The registration agency most journals use to issue DOIs and deposit article metadata, including reference lists, which is what makes citations between articles followable.

DOI

Digital Object Identifier: a permanent name for an article, and a commitment that it will keep resolving to wherever the article lives. Registered once and never changed.

Folio

The page number as printed on the page, together with whatever sits beside it - the journal name, the volume, the article number.

Front matter

Everything about an article as opposed to in it: title, authors, affiliations, abstract, keywords, funding, licence, identifiers and dates.

Galley

The typeset article. Historically the tray of set type a proof was pulled from; now the PDF that shows the article as it will be published.

Galley proof

The typeset article sent to an author to check before publication. Its purpose is to catch errors introduced since acceptance and errors of fact only the author can see - not to allow revision.

Gutter

The space between two columns of text, or between a page and its binding. Too narrow and a reader's eye crosses it by accident.

ISSN

International Standard Serial Number: the identifier for the journal itself. A journal published in print and online has two, and swapping them in a deposit is one of the commonest metadata errors.

JATS

Journal Article Tag Suite: the standard way of writing down a journal article so that each part of it is labelled - this is the abstract, this author has this affiliation, this reference has this year. What indexes, archives and PubMed Central expect.

Keywords

Terms supplied with an article to help it be found and classified. Carried as a list rather than as a line of text, so that each one can be indexed.

Licence

The terms under which an article may be reused, such as a Creative Commons licence. Needs to be stated in a form a machine can read as well as a sentence a person can, or the article looks closed when it is open.

MathML

A way of writing down mathematics so that it remains mathematics - searchable, readable aloud, and re-settable at any size - rather than becoming a picture of an equation.

Metadata

The facts about an article rather than its content. Most deposit rejections and most indexing errors are metadata problems, not content problems.

ORCID

A persistent identifier for a researcher, which distinguishes them from everyone with a similar name and follows them between institutions.

Page proof

A proof taken after the article has been made up into pages, so it shows where figures, tables and page breaks actually fall. Often used interchangeably with galley proof.

PubMed Central

A full-text archive of biomedical literature. It requires structured full text rather than PDFs, which is why many biomedical journals first need XML in order to be deposited in it.

Recto and verso

The right-hand and left-hand pages of a spread. A journal printed double-sided usually starts each article on a recto, and running heads often differ between the two.

Running head

The line repeated at the top of each page carrying the journal name, the authors or the article title - enough for a reader holding a photocopied page to know what they have.

Supplementary material

Files published alongside an article but not part of it: data sets, code, long tables, video. Deposited with the article and referenced from it, rather than embedded in it.

Typesetting

Deciding and carrying out how an article sits on the page: columns, typefaces, heading sizes, where figures fall, how tables break. Invisible when done well.

Version of record

The published, citable version of an article - the one a DOI points at. Distinct from the accepted manuscript, which is the same science without the publisher's typesetting and corrections.

Widow and orphan

A single line left at the top of a column (widow) or the bottom of one (orphan), separated from the rest of its paragraph. Both look like mistakes and both are avoidable in the page design.

XML-first

Structuring an article before publishing it, so that the PDF, the online version and every deposit are produced from one approved source rather than made separately and reconciled afterwards.

Last reviewed 6 October 2026