I’m trying to implement an online-first workflow, and came across the Forthcoming plugin, but I’m not clear on what the advantage is.
Here’s my proposed workflow:
Create an issue titled ‘Online first’, with the next issue and volume number (but these are hidden by unchecking their checkboxes in the issue’s settings).
Add new submissions, and assign them to the ‘Online first’ issue
Once sufficient submissions for an issue are published, change the title of the ‘Online first’ issue to its ‘real’ title, and select the checkboxes to display volume number, issue number, and year.
Create a new, blank ‘Online first’ issue and repeat the cycle.
As far as I can tell this should work. The only potential downside I can see is with metadata: the temporary title of the issue (‘Online first’) might be transmitted to third parties. But in all other respects it works, since internally the volume and issue numbers are accurate, as is the year, and so any DOIs generated will still be accurate once the issue is converted into a ‘real’ issue.
Two questions:
Is my understanding of this workflow correct?
What is the value of the Forthcoming plugin? Is it mainly to avoid the metadata complications above?
That is almost exactly the way we have solved this issues in one of our journals. The only difference with us is that we put articles in the Online first issue temporarely and when ready reasign the articles to a new issue that is published.
With our approach the DOI suffix can not include issue number, but it is possible to overcome that.
What you should verify and solve is the publishing date. Please check when the article and the issue publication date is set. That is the only think that might be a problem, but not sure, just verify it to be sure.
Hi @primozs do you ever run into problems from indexers and aggregators when you reassign an article from the Online First issue to a new, published issue?
Also, how do you manage the Current Issue? Is Online First always treated as the Current Issue, or do you maintain a second navigation menu item with a link to Online First and set the latest numbered issue with the Current Issue flag?
I am not aware of any problems regarding the indexing. We are making sure that the DOI doesn’t change. When the real issue is published, we move all Online First articles into this new issue. Thus we have in the navigation always the same item ‘Online First’ and normal current issue. The only observation I have is that we submit the ‘indexing’ data to the DOAJ only after the real issue is published and not while an article is in the Online First.
Hi @primozs,
can I ask about numbering pages after reassigning the articles to the new issue? Do you have to upload new files with the right pagination to the assignment?
Regards
Dorota
I am researching this method of an online-first workflow on behalf of one of our journals and basically have similar questions. I’m wondering how serious the problem with indexing the online first-issues is. I was thinking that the indexing services should be able to identify changes to the metadata somewhat regularly (versioning of articles would be inadvisable otherwise, no?). Anyone with examples of issues stemming from this workflow? I’m probably missing something here, grateful for any input.
At the moment I am thinking of recommending a similar workflow as the one you describe @laurenced (it is also similar to what’s in the Learning OJS manual), but additionally using the versioning functionality for the final paginated versions, so the metadata and PDF will be updated but the online first-version will be preserved. Anyone with experience in doing this?
One of our journals is looking at using online first articles, but we’re not sure about adding DOIs, as OJS tends to create DOIs with the Volume and Issue number.
How are you setting up DOIs so that they are issued to the online first articles, and then moving them over to the issue? I think there are examples here - https://vestnik.szd.si/
We first deposit DOIs when issue and article under the ‘Forthcoming issue’. Once real issue is issue (with all the articles in it) we re-deposit all the articles (that have been already deposited before). With that the DOI’s data is updated with the correct information.
Hi @primozs , thank you so much for your response.
Just so I’m clear, are the DOIs for the ‘Forthcoming issue’ temporary, and deposited manually? Or, do you use the CrossRef XML Export Plugin?
When the issue comes out with all the articles, do you use OJS to re-deposit the articles, and that’s when a different set of DOIs are assigned?
I’m guessing that your journal has used a custom pattern for the DOI Plugin Settings in OJS (third option below), and that’s how there is less concern about the Volume number and Issue number being included in the DOI suffix. That way, the DOIs are the same in the forthcoming issue and the real issue, but the metadata is updated in the background.
DOI Suffix
A DOI suffix can take any form, but must be unique among all publishing objects with the same DOI prefix assigned:
1) Use default patterns.
%j.v%vi%i for issues
%j.v%vi%i.%a for articles
%j.v%vi%i.%a.g%g for galleys.
2) Enter an individual DOI suffix for each published item. You’ll find an additional DOI input field on each item’s meta-data page.
3) Use the pattern entered below to generate DOI suffixes. Use %j for journal initials, %v for the volume number, %i for the issue number, %Y for the year, %a for the OJS article ID, %g for the OJS galley ID, %f for the OJS file ID, %p for the page number and %x for “Custom Identifier”.