What is OnlineFirst?

OnlineFirst is a feature offered through SAGE’s electronic journal platform, SAGE Journals Online. It allows final revision articles (completed articles in queue for assignment to an upcoming issue) to be hosted online prior to their inclusion in a final print and online journal issue. This feature is commonly referred to as “publish ahead of print,” “publish before print,” “continuous publishing,” and “P>P.” Access to full-text OnlineFirst articles are only available to paid subscribers or through a site license.

Benefits of OnlineFirst

OnlineFirst provides clear benefits to all researchers and users of the journal’s online content. The feature allows subscribers and members the ability to access the very latest papers in the field. Authors also benefit from greatly reduced lead times between submission and publication of articles. Without OnlineFirst, an author's work would only appear online once a finalized issue was sent to print. However, with OnlineFirst, manuscripts can appear online while other articles are being completed for an upcoming issue. 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 to OnlineFirst articles

Each OnlineFirst manuscript is citable using the date of the manuscript's first online posting and the DOI.  Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) are assigned to all SAGE content for use on digital networks and the metadata associated with that content is registered with the DOI Foundation (www.doi.org).  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 OnlineFirst articles (as that information is not known until the issue is completed), therefore these manuscripts should be cited as follows:

Smith, JR, Brown, AB. Article title. Journal Title. Prepublished Month, day, year, DOI: 10.1177/0123456789123456

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:

Smith, JR, Brown, AB. Article title. Journal Title. 2006, 33: 211-217 DOI: 10.1177/0123456789123456

Each article DOI is registered with CrossRef (www.crossref.org), allowing 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 OnlineFirst article is assigned to its final issue and given its bibliographic data, such as volume, issue, and first page number, the hosting of the article online transitions from the OnlineFirst listing to that of the completed issue. In other words, users will be able to locate the article via the journal’s main archive page rather than the OnlineFirst page. Citations using either the DOI or the bibliographic data will both resolve to the final article. The OnlineFirst version of the article will remain available but as a version to the final article. The primary, completed article will be the prominent article found when linking into the DOI or article URL.

To view the list of OnlineFirst article postings, visit the journal’s homepage and click on the OnlineFirst link at the top of the page. Readers and authors alike are encouraged to sign up for OnlineFirst email alert options, ensuring immediate notification each time a paper is published online first. Email alerts are also available for ongoing journal tables of contents and for alerts by author name and keyword. Visit http://online.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts and sign up today.

Do citations to OnlineFirst articles get counted in the calculation of Impact Factors?

Yes; however, according to Thomson Scientific, a citation to an article is not counted until an article is published in its final issue. For example, if an article becomes available in 2007 through OnlineFirst and is cited in 2007, but isn’t published in its final issue until 2008, the citation will count for the year 2008 rather than 2007.   

Is the OnlineFirst article considered final and definitive?

Yes – the article will not change from this version (except by the addition of pagination and volume/issue data). If errors are identified in this version then they will only be corrected by use of an erratum (as is the case for any published article).