BMJ  2008;336:1450 (28 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.a491

Editorials

Continuous publication

The next logical step

The BMJ is about to undergo another shift in the way that it publishes its content, which we hope will provide benefits for both readers and authors. From the beginning of July we will be publishing content continuously on bmj.com. All our articles will be published on line as they become ready, so bmj.com will update several times a day. Once published, articles will then be selected for a subsequent print issue.

Why are we doing this? It’s a logical extension of what we’ve been doing for some time with online first publication of research, and it will give all articles the benefit of faster publication.¹ This makes most sense in the context of research, news, and other topical items, but all authors appreciate seeing their work published as soon as possible.

Continuous publication also gives readers more flexibility in the way they engage with our content: as a continuous stream or in a weekly "package," or both. And it will allow us to tailor the print journal—which is read largely by UK readers—to their needs.

The BMJ is the first major medical journal to move to continuous publication, but within publishing generally it is not alone. Broadcasters have long been posting news continuously on their websites, and many newspapers now post their articles online as soon as they are written, in advance of the next morning’s paper edition. People’s online behaviour suggests that their interest is primarily in individual articles and not in the print issues, or indeed even the journal in which they appear. The BMJ has for some years been taking full advantage of the web, giving authors all the space they need for their research papers and providing shorter versions in print. With the shift to continuous publication for all our content, we will carry an increasing amount of content that is online only, allowing us to serve our growing audiences around the world with content that is most relevant to their specific interests and needs.

The move creates various routes into our content for print and online readers. Print readers will have readable, relevant, clustered content presented to them in a preselected weekly package, with the possibility, as now, to go deeper into that content and to respond to it on bmj.com. For readers who like to use the print issue to find content on bmj.com, the current print issue will still be displayed on the home page, and previous print issues can be browsed in the archive. And PDFs of print issues can be printed off, in section-sized chunks.

Online users can browse current content via a rolling table of contents of all articles published in the past seven days. This will still be organised by section (editorials, news, research, etc).

An important aspect of the change is in the way that articles will be organised and cited. The online "publish ahead of print" model that we have been using for research articles assumed that they would eventually be published in a print issue, and the ultimate citation for that article derived from that print issue. Thus, when it was first published, an online first article had a year and a doi (a unique identifier for a digital object)—for example, BMJ 2008 doi:10.1136/bmj.012334.5678.BM—but when it later appeared in print, the definitive citation for that article became the traditional one of year, volume, and page number: BMJ 2008;336:123-5.

From now on, each article will have only one, permanent, citation and it will no longer derive from print. The citation will be year, volume, e-locator (a unique identifier for that article)—for example, BMJ 2008;337:a145—and this is what will appear in Medline, PubMed, and other bibliographical indexes. We will print this citation on every item we publish, in print and online, and authors will need to use it when they cite these BMJ articles.

Highwire Press, who provide our web platform and have built the tools that enable us to publish continuously, predict that in a few years’ time "everyone will be doing it." We hope that our authors and readers will see the benefits, and as always we welcome your feedback.

¹ BMJ, London WC1H 9JR

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Competing interests: FG, TD, and JS are employees of the BMJ.

Provenance: Commissioned, not externally peer reviewed.

References

1. Delamothe T. Is that it? How online articles have changed over the past five years. BMJ 2002;325:1475-8.[Free Full Text]

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