Re: Emerald speeds up publication with EarlyCite

["Laura B. Mullen" <lbmullen@rci.rutgers.edu>]

Readers of the LIS and management literature, as well as the authors
that submit to these journals care very much about currency, and
understand a publisher's desire to get articles out as quickly as
possible. Waiting six months or more for the latest scholarly
communications or information science articles may not be appealing to
readers, and certainly not to authors who want their papers to appear
online as quickly as is possible(as long as they are peer-reviewed and
branded). Junior faculty may have other promotion and tenure reasons to
desire quick certified publication.Other journals competing for the same
readers and authors, especially open access journals are able to get
articles out very quickly. Even College and Research Libraries has
adopted an epub ahead of paper model. With such a competitive
marketplace out there(even for the LIS journals), many will be happy
with Emerald's quicker "publication" of articles. As a librarian, I do
wholeheartedly agree about the other issues raised about copyediting,
and versioning. I think Emerald is making a smart move, even if it
doesn't affect their journals' impact factors. It would sway my decision
to both submit articles to their journals, and recommend them for
library purchase (due to the added value). A lower price for
subscriptions would be best of course!
Interlibrary loan librarians may start to struggle with all of this
"express" publishing, and at least Emerald is including the advance
articles in their institutional subscriptions, unlike the model of those
like "Science Express," which charges an "add-on" price for the latest
online articles.

Laura Bowering Mullen
Rutgers Library of Science and Medicine




Phil Davis wrote:
> One must remember that Emerald is not a publisher of the
> biomedical literature.  They specialize in Management and Library
> Science, fields whose articles gather few (if any) citations over
> long periods of time.  It is not surprising that this publisher
> wishes to give a head-start for these articles, hoping that some
> will be cited while their Impact Factor window is still open.
> Perhaps the desire for citations is more powerful than the desire
> for readability?
>
> --Phil Davis
>
>