Analysis of typography in papers from open access Brazilian scientific journals

Scientific journals are the main form of recording and disseminating results of scientific research. After the advancement of digital media, their search, access, and navigation became easier and faster. This changes the way readers interact with the content. In this sense, the configuration of typography, an essential component of text-based publications, should facilitate the reading and understanding of the information presented. Thus, this research aimed to formalize an analysis process for the application of typography in papers on electronic scientific journals. Based on the literature review, an analysis structure was formulated. The analysis identified the fundamental principles of application of typography as: legibility, readability, spacing and font size and information hierarchy. Subsequently, four electronic papers from Brazilian scientific journals with different areas of knowledge were selected as objects of study. As a result, a potential application of typography for digital media was identified, but this potential is not fully explored by the editors of scientific journals nor by the literature dealing with the topic.