The National Scholarly Book Publishers’ Forum, is determined to strengthen links between books and scholarship.  Since the mid-20th century, knowledge generally regarded as reliable, or scholarly, has been concentrated largely in journals, something that has its origins in the first scientific periodicals of the mid-1600s in Europe.  

Without legislation or international agreements, journal editors and publishers follow a set of rules, the most important of which are the need for originality, a full disclosure of methods, coherent and honest reporting of data subjected to proper statistical analysis and a full citation of all sources…

Reference:  Web-link