nonarticle

Nonarticle is a term used in information science and digital libraries to describe documents that are not categorized as articles within a publishing, indexing, or archival system. It is meant to distinguish text-based items that do not appear as serial, periodical, or peer‑reviewed articles from items that do, such as journal articles, magazine features, or conference papers.

In practice, nonarticles can include internal reports, memos, correspondence, white papers, technical manuals, policy briefs, forms, and other text-based documents that are not published as articles in a periodical. The classification helps information systems apply appropriate metadata, search filters, and access rules. Depending on the system, content like technical notes or blog posts might be treated as nonarticles or as a different, more specific type.

Etymology and usage: the term nonarticle is a constructed compound of non- (not) and article (a written piece that appears in a periodical). It is not widely standardized and is mostly used within particular collection management, archival, or data-management contexts. Because publishers typically label works as articles for citation and indexing, nonarticle usage is largely internal to organizations or research corpora and may not appear in general bibliographic references.

Applications and implications: in metadata schemas and digital repositories, nonarticle categorizations support precise retrieval and sorting by document type. Systems may rely on a resource type field, a document model, or content-type indicators to separate nonarticles from articles. Edge cases arise for items that straddle boundaries, such as long-form blog posts or white papers that some systems cache as articles while others classify as nonarticles.

See also: Article (publishing), Document type, Metadata, Information retrieval.