© 2001 American Heart Association, Inc.
Editorials |
Announcing Online First
Posting of Scientific Articles Before Publication in Circulation Research
From the Editor in Chief and Associate Editors, Circulation Research.
Correspondence to Circulation Research Editorial Office, 2700 Lighthouse Point East, Suite 230, Baltimore, MD 21224. E-mail circulation.research{at}circresearch.com
Key Words: electronic publishing • intellectual property • early online posting • embargo date
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Introduction |
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 Top Introduction |
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Rapid advances in electronic publishing have created the expectation of virtual immediacy in access to scientific information. It is now commonplace to post articles online in advance of publication in the print issue; the standards vary widely from journal to journal, from the extreme of posting unedited manuscripts within days of acceptance (eg, Journal of Biological Chemistry), to the peripatetic early release of selected studies (witness the treatment of the human genome project articles by Science and Nature). The obvious benefits of immediacy must be weighed against the potential pitfalls. Unedited PDF versions of manuscripts leapfrog the quality control conferred by the copyediting and composition processes. More importantly, the absence of a preestablished embargo date complicates the authors’ ability to protect their intellectual property.
Circulation
Research, in consultation with the Scientific Publishing
Committee of the American Heart Association, has chosen to initiate an
experiment with early online posting. Our middle-ground approach debuts
coincident with this issue. All original scientific articles that will
appear in the next print issue, dated April 13, 2001, became accessible
online when the current issue was released. Individual and
institutional subscribers can now log on to
www.circresaha.org and access full-text and PDF
versions of the Original Contributions and Reports that will appear in
the next issue. These are final versions of the articles, fully citable
with definitive volume number and pagination. Henceforth, all Original
Contributions and Reports will be posted online one issue in advance of
the print version. This strategy will effect a meaningful reduction in
the time from acceptance to appearance in the public
domain (from the current mean of 
8 weeks to 5 to 6
weeks) without sacrificing quality or the authors’ ability to
protect their intellectual property. As of today, the embargo date for
the articles posted under Online
First changes to coincide with that of the concurrent print
issue.
We launch this initiative as an experiment rather than as
definitive policy for various reasons. The initiation of
Online First entails new
expenses for software and server maintenance that must be
justified by the enhanced value of early accessibility to scientific
content. We will assess the value of this initiative by monitoring the
frequency with which the early postings are accessed, the growth of
citations, and the rate at which individual subscribers
activate their online subscriptions (at 35% of the individual
subscriber base, Circulation
Research leads the AHA journals in the prevalence of online
activation, but this percentage is nevertheless puzzlingly low). We
will also conduct online surveys of the Editorial Board and of a broad
spectrum of readers and authors after 10 months to gauge the impact
of this practice. Finally, by couching the present practice as an
experiment, we retain the flexibility to push the envelope further,
with the goal of aggressive abbreviation of the time from
acceptance to publication.
As always, the Editors welcome your comments and feedback. You can reach us at circulation.research@ circresearch.com or via the "Feedback" utility on the journal’s Web site.
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