Q: What is the meaning of a journal moving to 'Continuous Article Publication'?

Detailed Question -

I received the following message from the journal:

Dear author,

This journal moves to Continuous Article Publication, which may cause a delay in processing and publication of your article.

My manuscript status is ‘Under review.’ What [given the status of my manuscript] does the above message mean?

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

Continuous Article Publication (CAP), as the name suggests, means that the journal will publish an article for an issue as and when that article is accepted, rather than waiting for all articles intended for that issue to be ready. In a manner of speaking, the issue remains ‘open’ for a while. As and when an article is published, that article goes to the top of that particular section, until the next accepted article intended for that issue.

Journals move to a CAP model to bring out reviewed research faster for other researchers and interested readers. Depending on the exact flavor of the model they wish to adopt, they may allow some changes to the accepted article that is initially published online.

Coming to your manuscript, the delay they are referring to could be due to the transition; otherwise, as already mentioned, CAP is meant to share accepted papers faster. However, as your manuscript is still under review, presently, there is still some time to go for acceptance and publication, if that indeed proves to be the journal decision. If needed, you may of course write to the journal to understand more about this change.

Until then, given that the peer review changes would probably be the next action for you, you may wish to prepare yourself by going through these resources.

All the best for your manuscript!

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