Continuous publication

The first two academic journals in the world were Le Journal des savants created in January, 1665 in France [¹] , followed by Philosophical transactions, founded later that year in March [²], in England. For the next 350 years, there were no significant changes in this form of scientific publishing, while in the last two decades, there have been many transformations caused by the development of the World Wide Web (WWW) in 1990 [³]. Only 3 years after the public presentation of the WWW in 1993, scientific journals began to be disseminated through the Internet.

Initially, scientific journals began to be edited with the aim of publishing summaries of printed books, and from the 19th century on, the scientific article became the most important means of communication of research results [⁴], multiplying continuously the number of existing scientific journals that were born on a regular basis, whether weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bimonthly.

The development of the WWW has brought multiple consequences for scientific publication, affecting not only the product, but also the article construction process, facilitating communication and interaction between researchers to conceive and develop research, in different stages, including the writing stage of the article, the published article, the editorial process, and finally, interaction with the readers of the articles.

Very present in the history of scientific journals is the evolution of their presentation style evolving in parallel with advances in technology. They receive the support of the presentation of the articles from the editorial board of the journals and from these to the printers, which went from typewritten paper to electronic files. Formerly, manuscripts were recorded on a diskette, which was sent to the newsrooms by postal mail, later being replaced by electronic mail. Currently, most journals use an online platform, being the most popular the Open Journal System [⁵]. Simultaneously, the electronic publication began, at first coexisting with its printed version that, little by little, is being abandoned. There are even recent journals that have been born exclusively with this form of edition and that, in 12 years, have positioned themselves at the head of the most cited, as is the case of PlosOne [⁶].

The electronic edition allowed the compilation of the published works, not only on the web page of each journal but also in the different virtual libraries and thematic and institutional repositories [⁷]. Perhaps this step is the one that has contributed the most to the generation of the initiative for open access on the Internet to the full text of articles (Open Access) [⁸].

The immediacy of the electronic edition required the publication of articles directly upon acceptance, moving from periodic publication to continuous publication. Continuous publication is a model used when an article is ready to be included in the journal; that is, it is published individually immediately after being approved. So, this type of publication implies the disappearance of the periodicity of the journal numbers, leaving only the volumes, where, depending on how the journal establishes it, it will be the only moment in which the articles will be grouped continuously, as they were published. For example, if the volumes of the journal selected are annual, those articles published continuously during that year will be the ones included in that volume [⁹].

Under this new publication format, the evaluation process of the works through specialized academic peers is maintained as a fundamental principle and the times established for each phase of the review are respected; this is an attribute that must be maintained even and with the very variable academic context. Among the main characteristics that differentiate this new continuous publication format is the disappearance of the consecutive numbering in the pagination of the issue, to restart each article from number 1 and end with the one that corresponds to the last page. For the reference of the works, the electronic identifier is included in the information on the first page and in the citation suggestion that appears at the end, so that it replaces the data that previously indicated the pages of the work [¹⁰].

Some journals, especially those that maintain their printed edition for subscribers, continue to compile published works in numbers on an ongoing basis. It is very likely that, depending on the needs of each journal, it would be more convenient to continue with periodic issues if a large number of articles are published and to compile them in an annual volume when it is a small number of articles [¹¹].

With continuous publication, the dissemination of research results is accelerated by immediate uploading to the web once they have been evaluated, so that Internet users have quick access to them. This modality has been adopted by a significant number of scientific journals worldwide; this is a strategy that contributes to the consultation, recommendation and citation of the information immediately [¹²].

Revista Facultad de Ingenieria Universidad de Antioquia-redin-, has adopted this method of continuous publication since issue 93, gathering the articles after their publication in issues, with a quarterly frequency. Once the manuscripts pass the scientific quality evaluation and the language stages, they are published online in a future issue, specifying in the watermark that they have been approved, but editorial style adjustments must be developed until their final version. Once we have enough articles in their final version, they are grouped under a publication issue and we continue to use the traditional pagination style.