EDITORIAL COMMENT

A new publication model for SAJOT

Historically SAJOT has always published 1 Volume per year, comprising three issues published in April, August, and December. This publication structure is a serial process, where each submission is desk-edited / vetted, peer-reviewed and, if accepted, goes through an intensive copy-edit by two editorial team members, is sent for layout and conversion to PDF format and, after a final check by a team member and author(s), is queued for publication in a specific issue. The steps in this serial process could cause delays in the turn-around time of all submissions. If, for example, a manuscript is copy edited and accepted for publication in early May, it can only be published in the August or December issues of the same year, which could mean a delay of a further 3 or even 7 months from acceptance to publication.

In an attempt to cut down on the turn-around time for submissions, SAJOT is currently considering adopting a 'continuous publication' or 'online first' publication model. In this model, each manuscript is posted on the website as soon as it is accepted, finalised and laid out. The benefit of this model to authors, is that articles will have full citation potential in a much shorter time. Readers will also benefit as they will have access to information much sooner, especially in cases where article content is time sensitive.

Another potential benefit is that any issues (such as problems experienced with in-text hyperlinks, errata, referencing, etc.) can be immediately detected and rectified. Should this occur, the copy of the article is retracted, and replaced with a revised version bearing a different article identifier. These corrections can therefore be done before the journal issue is loaded on the various indexes such as SciELO.

Some journals that follow this model, publish only one volume per year, with no sub-division into consecutive issues. Although the benefit of this model is that all accepted articles are available online immediately, the volume will only be published at the end of the year, which has implications for institutional recognition, funding, and credit.

The other option is to upload all final versions of the articles immediately, and then in April, August, and December, all the articles that have been made available online in the preceding months, will be combined and published in three separate issues throughout the year.

Citations

In continuous publication, individual articles will also no longer be sequentially paginated per issue; each article will start on Page 1. In other words, instead of the first article in an issue starting on page 1, the second on page 20, the third on page 36 etc., for citation purposes, each article will be sequentially numbered in the order it is published in a particular issue, providing a unique article identifier, i.e., Volume 54, no. 3, Article 34, pp 1-9; Volume 54, no. 3, Article 21, pp 1-10. The article number will therefore still demarcate the order in which the articles in a particular issue were published.

Call for comment

We are hoping to implement this model as soon as possible, and trust that it will be of benefit to authors and readers and spread out the 'crunch-time' stress of the editorial team and layout artists. We are open to and welcome any comments or questions from our users for consideration. Please contact the editorial team at sajot@otasa.org.za.

Blanche Pretorius

Editor in Chief