Journals and publications are both ways to publish writing on UNI. The difference is where the writing lives: a journal is composed on the platform, a publication is a PDF you upload.
A journal is written on UNI
A journal is a long form post you write in the UNI editor: process notes, an essay, a case study, a write up of a project. Nothing is uploaded as a document.
Start one from Create Journal on the Journals page of your profile. Published journals are listed at uni.xyz/journals.
A journal will not publish until it has all of these:
- A title.
- A tagline.
- Content in the body.
- A cover image, up to 15 MB.
- A story type.
- At least one discipline. You can add a second.
Until they are all filled in, the Publish button stays greyed out and the page tells you what is missing.
A publication is a PDF you upload
A publication is a document you already have: a dissertation, a research paper, a portfolio book, a magazine spread, a report. UNI processes the file so readers can page through it in a viewer without leaving the page.
Start one from Create Publication on the Publications page of your profile. Published publications are listed at uni.xyz/publications.
A publication will not publish until it has all of these:
- A PDF file, up to 50 MB.
- A title.
- A thumbnail, up to 10 MB.
- A publication type.
- At least one discipline. You can add a second.
A description is optional on a publication. On a journal the tagline is not optional, so if you have only a couple of paragraphs and no headline for them, a publication is usually the easier fit.
Both start as drafts
A journal or a publication stays a draft until you publish it, and a draft is not listed anywhere public. You can work on either one over several sittings and release it when it is ready.
Editing after you publish
The two behave differently here, so it is worth knowing which you are working on.
On a journal, edits to an already published journal are held as draft changes. The live journal keeps showing the last published version until you press Publish again. There is no Discard button, so draft changes stay on the draft until you either publish them or overwrite them by editing again. Discard unsaved edits to a published journal explains what you can do instead.
On a publication, editing the first step of an already published publication puts it back into draft, which takes it off the public listing. Finish your edits and press Publish again in the same sitting so it does not sit unlisted.