Impact of prior electronic publication on manuscript consideration policies of scholarly journals

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to study current policies and practices of scholarly journals on evaluating manuscripts for publication that had been previously published electronically. Various electronic forms were considered: a manuscript having been e‐mailed to members of a listserv, attached to a personal or institutional home page, stored in an electronic preprint collection, or published in an electronic proceedings or electronic journal. Factors that might affect the consideration of such manuscripts were also examined, including characteristics of the journal, the previously published work, and the submitted manuscript. A sample of 202 scholarly journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities was selected for study. A questionnaire and cover letters were sent to the journal editors in the summer and fall of 1997, with an overall return rate of 57.4%. Results are reported for all journals, with comparisons being made between journals edited in the Unites States and outside the Unites States, by journal impact factor, and by discipline. The findings suggest that editorial policies regarding prior electronic publication are in an early stage of development. Most journal editors do not have a formal policy regarding the evaluation of work previously published in electronic form, nor are they currently evaluating such a policy. Editors disagreed widely on the importance of the various factors that might affect their decision to consider a work previously published electronically. The form or type of prior electronic publication was an important variable. Although some editors currently have a fairly rigid and negative posture towards work previously published electronically, most are willing to consider certain forms of such work for publication in their journals. Probably the most significant results of the study were the many differences in practices among scholarly disciplines. The findings of this study reveal how the Internet and the World Wide Web are currently affecting manuscript consideration policies of scholarly journals at this early stage of Web and Internet publishing.

Extracting macroscopic information from Web links

“…The lack of evidence for such dual publication may be due to the existence of factors mitigating against it both before and after the submission and acceptance of a paper in a journal. The belief that prior electronic publication may prejudice editors against acceptance is a disincentive to prepublish on the Web (Harter & Taemin, 2000). After publication, copyright restrictions can also stop a paper from being published on the author's university Web site.…”

arXiv E‐prints and the journal of record: An analysis of roles and relationships

“…Enforcement of the so‐called Ingelfinger rule—that is, rejecting an article because of prior publication of the same work—was something of a deterrent to the growth and development of preprint servers, as many communities lacked consensus on whether the public dissemination of a preprint constituted prior publication (Butler, ; Eysenbach, ). In early studies, most journal editors reported no formal policies on previously published work, although they distinguished between items that were previously published in journals and conferences and those appearing in less formal venues (i.e., the author's website, preprint archives, listservs), favoring publication of the latter (Harter & Park, ). However, there has been a marked relaxation of the Inglefinger rule in recent years as use of the Internet has become ubiquitous and “green” open access archiving has become increasingly accepted by commercial publishers (e.g., Elsevier).…”

Informetrics at the beginning of the 21st century—A review

“…In another study Brown (2003) considered eprint in chemistry, and found that only 6% of the editors who responded to her survey (a 17% response rate) allowed publication of papers that previously appeared in preprint-showing considerable differences between physics and chemistry. Harter and Park (2000) conducted a larger scale survey among editors in several disciplines and achieved a much better response rate (57.4%). Most editors did not have a formal policy regarding prior electronic publication, but most were willing to consider "certain forms of such work for publication" (p. 940).…”