SEeB Online First Publishing Policy

The SEeB Editorial Board follows the Online First publishing policy. Online First is a feature that allows final revision articles (completed articles in queue for assignment to an upcoming issue) to be hosted online prior to their inclusion in a journal volume/issue. This feature is commonly referred to as publish ahead of print, publish before print, continuous publishing.

Benefits: Online First provides clear benefits to all researchers and users of the journal’s online content. The feature allows access to the very latest papers in the field. Authors also benefit from greatly reduced lead times between submission and publication of articles. An author’s research will therefore reach its audience more quickly, enabling an article to receive greater usage and exposure, including earlier citation opportunities by related work.

Citations: Each Online First manuscript is citeable using the date of the manuscript’s first online posting and the DOI. DOIs provide a persistent, permanent way to identify manuscripts published in the online environment, even after they are assigned to a print issue. Information such as volume, issue, and page numbers are not allocated to Online First articles (as that information is not known until the issue is completed), therefore these manuscripts should be cited as follows:

• Jones, Richard, and Adam B. Smith. “Article title.” Journal Title. Pre-published Month, day, year, DOI: https://21697/seb0123456789.
• After the article is assigned to a specific issue, new citations can be made using volume and page number information, while still using the DOI: Jones, Richard, and Adam B. Smith. 2021. “Article title.” Journal Title 19(4): 11-17. DOI: https://21697/seb0123456789.
• Each article DOI is registered with CrossRef, allowing the permanent resolution to each article and giving publishers the ability to link their references to articles whenever they are cited.

Transition to a final issue: Once an Online First article is assigned to its final issue and given its bibliographic data, such as volume, issue, year, and page numbers, the hosting of the article online transitions from the Online First listing to that of the completed issue. Citations using either the DOI or the bibliographic data will both resolve to the final article.