Online journal publishing

The arrival of the internet has brought tremendous changes to the STM publishing world, an important one being electronic editions of journals. Many journals that were only previously available in print are now available electronically, which brings tremendous benefits to authors and readers around the world.

What does it mean to be e-only?

Many newly established journal have set themselves up as electronic only (e-only, or online-only), especially with the rise of open access journals,  but others are still in transition, with libraries and publishers finding themselves with both paper and electronic editions. This form of publishing has also brought with it a new type of editor, a web editor, who is responsible for managing online content

What is Online First? What is a DOI and how is it used?

Online First publishing (i.e. publishing an electronic version of the article in advance of the print edition) considerably reduces the time it would have previously taken for critical discoveries in the research community to be communicated, often by many months.

Once a proof has been corrected and finalized, an article is ready for Online First publication and can be published online. This means that readers can access peer reviewed articles well before print publication. These articles are searchable on the journal homepage and on PubMed and they can be cited using their unique DOI (Digital Object Identifier). The formatting depends on the reference style of the journal, but in principle you can simply use the DOI instead of volume and page numbers, as in the following example:

Gamelin FX, Baquet G, Berthoin S, Thevenet D, Nourry C, Nottin S, Bosquet L (2009) Effect of high intensity intermittent training on heart rate variability in prepubescent children. Eur J Appl Physiol. doi: 10.1007/s00421-008-0955-8
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