Journals have to decide how frequently they wish to publish new submissions, as this will have an impact on workload, peer review management, IT costs and more. In the traditional publishing paradigm, where the print format was most common, it was typical for journals to publish issues as collections of peer-reviewed articles or other submissions, sometimes bundled in volumes. However, the introduction of digital publishing is shifting behaviours and introducing new models. In the following sections, we outline options for journals and the likely implications of different publication frequencies.
Fixed frequency
Conventional publishing often involves issues that can be bundled in volumes, which appear at pre-determined and regular intervals, and have fixed deadlines for the submission of manuscripts. If publishing under a fixed issue model, the journal may have a set number of articles and number of issues that are published per year, and the issue publication dates may also be fixed. Articles submitted after submission deadlines may be immediately published online under an ‘upcoming articles’ section (or similar), and subsequently included as part of the next available issue.
Continuous article publication
Digital publishing allows the continuous publication of articles, meaning that these can be published as soon as they are ready (i.e. peer-reviewed, copy-edited, typeset and proofed) rather than waiting for a specific issue publication date. The rationale for a continuous article publication model is to speed up the pace of review and publication, which can benefit the author as their work is published sooner, can benefit the journal as the times to publication are shorter, and can benefit the journal team as their workload is spread out instead of bottlenecked into set times during the year. Articles published under this model may be grouped in issues, but this is not mandatory. If this is the case, the latest published article would appear at the top of the issue, until the next article is accepted.
Special issues
Some digital publishers opt to commission special issues alongside their regular publishing efforts. Special issues typically focus on a specific topic or a conference and are managed by a guest editor and an editorial team not linked to the journal’s editorial board. This allows the journal to gain a set of new perspectives that are closely tied to the subject matter of the special issue. The editorial process for special issues should be of the same standard as the main content for the journal, with the Editor in Chief having ultimate oversight: this means that the guest editor and editorial team should collate and curate the contents, but the journal’s own staff must quality assure and approve materials before these are published.
In practice however the matter is still very much under discussion. In commercial publishing, special issues seem to offer an easy road to higher publication profits and introduce the risk that research published this way could be less independent from established opinions as guest editors could be tempted to invite researchers from their closer network to publish their work with them.
Some special issues have been linked to paper mills or manipulated citations, undermining trust in the journal that published them. In addition, journals that publish too many special issues may be flagged by indexing services (e.g., Scopus, Web of Science, DOAJ) for imbalanced content. This can result in delisting, harming the journal’s reputation and discoverability.
Possible solutions and proposed best practices consist of:
- Clear editorial guidelines.
- Editor-in-Chief oversight: the Editor-in-Chief should approve all content in special issues to ensure consistency and integrity.
- Balanced publication strategy: maintain a healthy ratio of regular to special issues to avoid overreliance on themed content.
- Training for Guest Editors: provide training and support to guest editors to ensure they understand ethical and procedural expectations.
- Indexing compliance monitoring: regularly review the journal’s output to ensure it aligns with indexing service criteria.
- Transparent peer review: encourage or require open peer review or publish peer review histories to increase accountability
Considerations for journal indexing
New journals often aim to be indexed in relevant databases, such as the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Web of Science or Scopus. A key requirement of these indexes is that journals are actively publishing, and, in some cases, there will be a minimum number of articles per year to be considered in the index. As a result, journals should ensure that their publication frequency and volume are set in line with any indexing objectives, to ensure that indexes do not reject an application on these grounds.
