Presentation at ISSI2015
Haustein, S., Bowman, T.D. & Costas, R. (2015). When is an article actually published? An analysis of online availability, publication, and indexation dates
Abstract. With the acceleration of scholarly communication in the digital era, the publication year is no longer a sufficient level of time aggregation for bibliometric and social media indicators. Papers are increasingly cited before they have been officially published in a journal issue and mentioned on Twitter within days of online availability. In order to find a suitable proxy for the day of online publication allowing for the computation of more accurate benchmarks and fine-grained citation and social media event windows, various dates are compared for a set of 58,896 papers published by Nature Publishing Group, PLOS, Springer and Wiley-Blackwell in 2012. Dates include the online date provided by the publishers, the month of the journal issue, the Web of Science indexing date, the date of the first tweet mentioning the paper as well as the Altmetric.com publication and first-seen dates. Comparing these dates, the analysis reveals that large differences exist between publishers, leading to the conclusion that more transparency and standardization is needed in the reporting of publication dates. The date on which the fixed journal article (Version of Record) is first made available on the publisher's website is proposed as a consistent definition of the online date.
When is an article actually published? An analysis of online availability, publication, and indexation dates
1. When is an article
actually published?
An analysis of online availability,
publication, and indexation dates
Stefanie Haustein, Timothy D. Bowman & Rodrigo Costas
@stefhaustein @timothydbowman @RodrigoCostas1
9. Introduction
submission acceptance publication
journal issue
online
publication
preprint
publication
year
citations citations
• Bibliometric indicators are based on publication
year of journal issue
• Lag between online and issue date creates
citation advantage
10. • Publication year insufficient for bibliometric indicators
• January vs. December papers
• Acceleration of read-cite-read cycle
• Online publication before journal issue
• Lags between online and issue date
Online dates would allow for more accurate metrics
Motivation and Questions
?
11. • Publication year insufficient for bibliometric indicators
• January vs. December papers
• Acceleration of read-cite-read cycle
• Online publication before journal issue
• Lags between online and issue date
Online dates would allow for more accurate metrics
1. Which publishers specify what kind of dates?
2. How reliable are these dates?
3. What existing dates can be used as alternatives?
Motivation and Questions
?
12. 1. Which publishers specify what kind of dates?
Determining dates provided by publishers
2. How reliable are these dates?
Validating online dates with date of first tweet
3. What existing dates can be used as alternatives?
Analyzing other dates
• WoS indexing date
• Altmetric.com publication date
• Altmetric.com first seen date
• CrossRef dates
Methods
13. Dataset
• WoS papers published in 2012 with ≥ 1 tweet
captured by Altmetric.com
• Matching of 313,301 WoS papers to Altmetric via DOI
• Excluding Altmetric records with preprints
(arXiv ID or ADS ID)
• Tweets to papers based on publisher’s website, DOI, PMID
• Identification of top 10 publishers
Methods
• Elsevier
• Wiley-Blackwell
• Lippincott
• Springer
• PLOS
• BMC
• NPG
• ACS
• Oxford
• Sage
14. Determining available dates
Methods
a = provided via API
m = in the metadata of the article webpage
w = on the article webpage only
d = as dynamic content on the webpage only
15. Dataset
• Limited to 71,175 papers from Wiley-Blackwell, Springer,
PLOS and NPG due to technical feasibility and relevance
• Retrieving online date information via API and parsing
specific HTML tags
Wiley-Blackwell “Early View”
Springer “Online First”
NPG “Advance Online Publication”
PLOS identical to publication date
• Additional dates from WoS, Altmetric.com and CrossRef
Methods
18. Altmetric.com publication date
Altmetric.com first seen date
Date of first tweet (Altmetric.com)
+ most detailed date information
‒ only for 21% of papers
‒ not always on day of publication
Methods
19. • Comparison of 58,896 papers with all 6 dates
• Comparing online date to:
• Date of first tweet
• Journal issue month (first of month)
• WoS indexing date
• Altmetric.com publication date
• Altmetric.com first seen date
• CrossRef deposit, first resolution
& update
Methods
validation
potential
alternatives
• Wiley-Blackwell: 27,432
• Springer: 14,473
• PLOS: 9,600
• NPG: 7,391
24. • Effect of online-issue lag on:
• Bibliometric indicators
• OA embargoes
“[T]he manuscript will not be posted [on PMC] until 12 months
after the official date of publication. […] The official publication
date may thus be considered the online publication date for some
journals and the print publication date for others.“
Wiley
“[The embargo period] begins from the publication date of the
issue the article appears in. Our embargo periods typically range
from 12 – 24 months […].”
Elsevier
Discussion and Conclusion
25. • Publishers should provide publication dates using
same terminology
• Inclusion of dates in metadata:
• Submission
• Acceptance
• Publication of preprint
• Publication of Version of Record (VoR)
• Publication of (print) issue
• Via CrossRef?
Implementation of date standards
• Via NISO?
Discussion and Conclusion
26. Thank you
for your attention!
Stefanie Haustein, Timothy D. Bowman & Rodrigo Costas
@stefhaustein @timothydbowman @RodrigoCostas1
Hinweis der Redaktion
Thank you very much for the invitation to talk!
I am very happy to be here today and talk to you about:
the way in which scholars communicate and
how research is being evaluated
Altmetric.com publication date
peaks for first of month and first of year: could be caused by aggregating data without actual day (and month) information
15.1% of Altmetric.com records did not have any or incorrect dates
Altmetric.com first seen date
Mostly equals first tweet date
4% no first seen date
Thank you very much for the invitation to talk!
I am very happy to be here today and talk to you about:
the way in which scholars communicate and
how research is being evaluated