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Frequently asked questions about AOP
Is the AOP version of the article definitive? Yes. Different publishers have different policies, and some journals publish unedited or partly edited versions of articles on their web sites before publishing them in print. NPG's policy, however, is to publish online only the final version of the paper, exactly as it will be published in the printed edition. The paper is thus complete in every respect except that instead of having a volume/issue/page number, it has a DOI (Digital Object Identifier). This means that the paper can be referenced as soon as it appears on the AOP site by using the DOI. What is a Digital Object Identifier? A digital object identifier (DOI) is an international, public, "persistent identifier of intellectual property entities" in the form of a combination of numbers and letters. For NPG content the DOI is assigned to an item of editorial content, providing a unique and persistent identifier for that item. The DOI system is administered by the International DOI Foundation (http://www.doi.org), a not-for-profit organization. CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org), a not-for-profit organization making the DOI a reference linking standard and enabling cross-publisher linking, maintains the lookup system for DOIs. NPG is a founding and board member of CrossRef. What do the numbers in the DOI signify? The DOI has two components, a prefix (before the slash) and a suffix (after the slash). The prefix is a DOI resolver server identifier (10) and a unique identifier assigned to the publisher-for example, the identifier for NPG is 1038 and the entire DOI prefix for an article published by NPG is 10.1038. The suffix is an arbitrary number provided by the publisher. It can be composed of numbers and/or letters and does not necessarily have any systematic significance. Each DOI is registered in a central resolution database that associates it with one or more corresponding web locations (URLs). For example, the DOI 10.1038/sj. emboj.XXXXXXX connects to http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sj.emboj.XXXXXXX. Can I use the DOI in a reference citation? Yes, instead of giving the volume and page number, you can give the paper's DOI at the end of the citation. For example, The EMBO Journal’s papers should be cited in the form:
After print publication, you should give the DOI as well as the print citation, to enable readers to find the paper in print as well as online. For example Author(s) (Year) Article Title. EMBO J volume, page; doi:10.1038/sj. emboj.XXXXXXX. How can I use a DOI to find a paper? There are two ways to use a DOI to find a paper:
What is the official publication date? Many journals, and most abstracting and indexing services (including Medline and ISI) cite the print date as the publication date. This is an evolving standard, however, and publishers are increasingly stating both the 'online publication date' and the 'print publication date'. NPG will continue to publish both dates for our own papers, and we hope that the scientific communities and abstracting and indexing services will recognize these dates. We will endeavour to include both the online publication date and the usual print citation in reference lists of NPG papers, where a paper has been published online before being published in print. Given the utility of the DOI in locating an online publication in the future, we encourage you to use DOIs in your reference citations (see "Can I use the DOI in a reference citation?"). For legal purposes (for example, establishing intellectual property rights), we assume that online publication constitutes public disclosure. But this is for the courts to decide; NPG's role as a publisher is to provide clear documentation of the publication history, online and in print. Must I subscribe to the journal in order to read AOP articles? Yes. AOP papers are the same as those in the print issues: while abstracts are freely available on any NPG journal's web site, access to the full-text article requires a paid subscription or a site license. Medline currently captures DOIs with online publication dates in its records, and is developing an enhanced level of support for the DOI system. Does The Institute for Scientific Information use DOIs? ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) currently captures DOIs in its records at the same time as the volume/issue/page number. Therefore, ISI is not using the DOI to capture information before print publication, but rather as an additional piece of metadata. How does AOP affect the calculation of impact factors? Impact factors are calculated by ISI. At present, ISI bases its calculations on the date of print publication alone, so until or unless ISI changes its policy, AOP has no effect on impact factors.
What are the page numbers that appear in PDFs of AOP papers? For convenience, the PDF version of every AOP article is given temporary pagination, beginning with page 1. This is unrelated to the final pagination in the printed article. |
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