What is the difference between AIAA 'articles' and 'technical notes'?

Question

I am curious about how the technical notes compare to to the full-length journal articles in AIAA. I have seen some PhD student graduating with only technical notes, and I want to understand if this is a weakness or a red flag altogether of its own. Apparently they are not peer-reviewed.

I am not trying to be judgmental; it is just that I am a fresh graduate student and I want to understand these things.

On AIAA's page, they are defined as follows:

Full-Length Papers and Regular Articles: Full-Length Papers and Regular Articles (in AIAA Journal) contain original, quantitative, detailed technical material, set into perspective relative to prior work and supported by literature references and specific technical accomplishments. A typical double-spaced Full-Length Paper or Regular Article will be approximately 10,000–12,000 words (including equations and equivalent space required for figures and tables). All manuscripts are expected to be as concise as possible.

Technical or Engineering Notes and Technical Comments: Short manuscripts may qualify for publication in one of these categories. Notes, approximately 2,500-3,500 words, are intended for prompt disclosures of new, significant data or developments of limited scope; they do not have abstracts but do contain introductions and descriptions of results. Comments should relate to papers previously published by AIAA; they must not exceed 1200 words. Manuscripts submitted in these categories often are reviewed only by an editor and may be published sooner than longer manuscripts.

Answer 1

To put your comment "I have seen some PhD student graduating with only technical notes" into context. In all the universities I worked at, a PhD student finishes with a thesis. This could be a collection of articles that are published, it could be a collection of not (yet) published papers, it could be a published, unpublished, or self-published monograph. It is no doubt a good thing to have published articles (or books, depending on the discipline), but what is judged in order to determine whether or not someone gets a PhD is the thesis. When the thesis is a collection of separate papers, there are different rules as whether or not these should be published at the time you submit the thesis depending on the university and the department (this can be an unreasonable hurdle given the delays involved with peer review process in some disciplines).

As to notes: "new, significant data or developments of limited scope" is exactly what I would expect the bulk of the production of a PhD student to be. Since that gets published quicker than a full articles, it would be expected that a PhD student finishes (if the rules at their department allows) with all notes and articles that are still in the pipeline.

Think of a typical development of a PhD student. They start by getting their feet wet in a small limited (sub-)project, the end-result of which would be a note rather than a full article. As they grow and learn they get to tackle bigger projects, something that could lead to a full article. So PhD students would start with note-like publications (depending on the discipline) or be a junior partner in a bigger project, and gradually move up to bigger and/or more independent work. So the notes are being submitted to journal earlier, and the journal processes them quicker. On the other hand the articles can be expected to be submitted later, and it takes longer for the journal to process them. Now you see why a PhD student could finish with published notes and articles in the pipeline.