Continuous Article Publishing

Continuous Article Publishing (CAP) is a publishing model for E-only journals. The main difference with existing models is that final articles are not published online ahead of a forthcoming issue (the Brill Advance option) but are immediately published online at their final location. Since registration of, loading of and access to journal content at Brill is volume and issue based, the implementation of CAP requires some special treatment. This is described in this document. Continuous Article Publishing means that each new article is added to an (existing) issue. As a result, the annual volume of published articles grows article-by-article instead of issue-based. All articles are added to an issue of the current volume.  Within an issue, every article starts with page 1, similar to Advance articles.             

Definition

Consequences of the CAP-model and its implementation at Brill are:

Journal Setup in KLOPOTEK

Since the registration of and access to journals at Brill is volume and issue based, a CAP-Journal is set up in KLOPOTEK like a regular E-only journal (no print version):

1. Each year an annual volume

2. Within a volume, issue 1 to publish all (general) articles

3. Upon request, a 2^nd issue can be added for special issue articles

With the first article(s) in an issue, the issue is released in KLOPOTEK, like a regular issue. The addition of next articles to the same issue does not have any consequences for the data in KLOPOTEK. Instead, as described in the next paragraph, the article is added to an issue.

Brill.com specifications

The information in KLOPOTEK is - as mentioned above - solely used for providing access. The volume and issue listing at brill.com is generated from the XML. To implement the CAP-model, the following elements and attributes are relevant:

As mentioned in the definition, the latest article should appear at the top of the table of contents. To ensure this, a separate meta-issue.xml file is necessary, listing the DOI's of the articles in the volume in the correct order. The structure of the meta_issue.xml file is explained hereafter.

Article File naming and Uploading

Each article follows, after acceptance, the regular process. Proofing versions are shared with the author(s) and editor(s). After implementing the corrections, final files are requested from the typesetter. The main difference is in the naming of the files. The article number is replacing the issue number. Instead of a two-digit issue number, a three-digit article-number is used. Thus, a maximum of 999 articles in a volume is possible. Filenames:

• Article 1:

  • filenames: <issn>_<vol>_s001.xml / pdf (no issue number)

  • zip package: <issn>_<vol>_001_JATS.zip (the article number replaces the issue number)

• Article 2:

  • filenames: <issn>_<vol>_s002.xml / pdf

  • zip package: <issn>_<vol>_002_JATS.zip

• Article 3:

  • filenames: <issn>_<vol>_s003.xml / pdf

  • zip package: <issn>_<vol>_003_JATS.zip

• Etc. (over 999 articles in a volume/issue are not expected)

Each zip-package contains besides the regular XML, PDF and - if applicable - image files an additional meta_issue.xml file. The zip-package can be handed over to Production for loading to brill.com. 

meta_issue.xml file

As mentioned before, the order of the articles can be set by listing the DOI's of each article in a meta_issue.xml file. The format of this file is shown in the next example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE MetaIssue SYSTEM "http://schema.highwire.org/public/toc/MetaIssue.dtd">
<MetaIssue volume="14" issue="1">
	<Provider>PubFactory</Provider>
	<TOC>
		<TocSection>
			<Heading>Latest Article</Heading>
			<Resource><DOI>10.1163/22105832-bja00993</DOI></Resource>
    	</TocSection>
		<TocSection>
			<Heading>Articles</Heading>    
			<Resource><DOI>10.1163/22105832-bja10033</DOI></Resource>
			<Resource><DOI>10.1163/22105832-bja10032</DOI></Resource>
			<Resource><DOI>10.1163/22105832-bja10031</DOI></Resource>
			<Resource><DOI>10.1163/22105832-bja10030</DOI></Resource>
			<Resource><DOI>10.1163/22105832-bja10029</DOI></Resource>
		</TocSection>
	</TOC>
</MetaIssue>

Notes:

1. volume and issue number is according to the information in Klopotek and to the XML file of the articles in the volume and issue
2. DOI's are copied from the articles and listed in the right order, newest first, oldest and the end
3. For each new article, a new meta_issue.xml must be created, based on the previous one. The DOI listed under Latest Article should be moved to the top of the listing under Articles. The DOI of the new article should be listed under Latest Articles.

Implementing this procedure in the 2024 volume

The previous procedure was based on a decreasing numbering of articles starting with 999, 998 etc., in combination with the delivery of an issue package with all articles in the issue. The naming convention described above can be implemented by assigning 001 as the article number of the next article. The only important thing is to add a complete meta_issue.xml file to this first article package, listing all DOI's of the articles that have been published already in the 2024 volume.

Multiple issues

As mentioned earlier, it is possible to have multiple issues within the CAP model, for example a special issue on a specific topic. If used, the following guidelines should be followed:

1. the article number is incremental across all issues within a volume. The maximum number of articles for each volume is 999.   The article number is independent of the issue in which it is published.
2. the issue number is defined in the xml. if the issue has a specific title, the <issue-title>-element must be included in the XML as well.
3. each issue has its own meta_issue.xml file with the contents (and order) of the issue. A new meta_issue.xml file should be included in the zip-package of each new article.