Periodical is an academic periodical published regularly, generally published by professional publishing institutions or academic organizations, and has an editorial board composed of scholars and experts, which is responsible for screening and reviewing the papers submitted. The publication cycle of a periodical is usually weekly, biweekly, xunkan, bimonthly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, biannual or annual, and the layout of each issue is basically the same, which has certain characteristics of continuous publication. Publishing papers in journals usually requires strict peer review procedures to ensure the academic and reliability of the papers.

Papers are usually academic documents, aiming at introducing the research progress, research methods, research results and contributions in a certain field. Papers need to go through a peer review process, and experts and scholars will review them to decide whether they are suitable for publication. Papers usually include abstracts, introduction, methods, results, discussions and references, so that readers can fully understand the main contents and conclusions of the research. Papers can be published in academic journals, conference papers, dissertations or reports.

Generally speaking, journals are publications, while papers are research results published in journals or other academic journals.