Publication Lag and Early View Effects in Information Science Journals

Abstract

Purpose–A major problem in today’s scholarly publishing process is the long tails for the assignment of volume and issue numbers for approved articles. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the extent to which information science journals offer early view features and the effects of these features.Design/methodology/approach–The study addresses three basic questions: Do the articles approved for publication in information science journals appear in the online platforms of these journals before theassignment of volume and issue numbers? How long do the articles wait in the online platforms before theyget the volume and issue numbers? Is there a statistically significant relationship between the onlineaccessing numbers of the articles before they are published and bibliometric indicators?Findings–More than half of the information science journals complete the editorial process in reasonable durations and share new articles with their readers before publishing them. In some journals, there are articles that wait for more than a year to be assigned volume and issue numbers after the completion of the editorialprocess. There are statistically significant differences, in terms of both their impact factor and immediacyindex values, between the journals that offer early view features and those that do not. Both the impact factorand the immediacy index values of the journals that provide early view are higher than the others.Practical implications–Adopting the early view policy may significantly help increase the impact factorand immediacy index values of the journals, as well as the visibility of their contents.Originality/value–The answers to this study’s research questions offer a new perspective to overcome thechallenges in the processes through which scientific products meet with their users.