Just Roll with It? Rolling Volumes vs. Discrete Issues in Open Access Library and Information Science Journals

INTRODUCTION Articles in open access (OA) journals can be published on a rolling basis, as they become ready, or in complete, discrete issues. This study examines the prevalence of and reasons for rolling volumes vs. discrete issues among scholarly OA library and information science (LIS) journals based in the United States. METHODS A survey was distributed to journal editors, asking them about their publication model and their reasons for and satisfaction with that model. RESULTS Of the 21 responding journals, 12 publish in discrete issues, eight publish in rolling volumes, and one publishes in rolling volumes with an occasional special issue. Almost all editors, regardless of model, cited ease of workflow as a justification for their chosen publication model, suggesting that there is no single best workflow for all journals. However, while all rolling-volume editors reported being satisfied with their model, satisfaction was less universal among discrete-issue editors. DISCUSSION The unexpectedly high number of rolling-volume journals suggests that LIS journal editors are making forward-looking choices about publication models even though the topic has not been much addressed in the library literature. Further research is warranted; possibilities include expanding the study’s geographic scope, broadening the study to other disciplines, and investigating publication model trends across the entire scholarly OA universe. CONCLUSION Both because satisfaction is high among editors of rolling-volume journals and because readers and authors appreciate quick publication times, the rolling-volume model will likely become even more prevalent in coming years. © 2013 Cirasella & Bowdoin. This open access article is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License, which allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. RESEARCH jlsc-pub.org | Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication Implications for Practice: • The article will make librarians and others aware of the existence, legitimacy, and prevalence of scholarly journals that publish in rolling volumes. (continued on following page) Received: 06/10/2013 Accepted: 07/03/2013 Jill Cirasella Associate Professor, Associate Librarian for Public Services and Scholarly Communication, The Graduate Center, CUNY Sally Bowdoin Assistant Professor, Head of Serials, Brooklyn College, CUNY


INTRODUCTION
Many familiar characteristics of scholarly journals result from constraints imposed by print publishing, constraints that do not apply to online journals. For example, the printing costs that limit the length (and color content) of paper articles are irrelevant for online journals; online articles can be as short or long (and as colorful) as appropriate for the topic under discussion, and online issues can contain as many or few articles as the editors wish. However, despite the flexibility afforded by online publishing, artifacts of print publishing persist in online journals-most notably, the adherence to publishing articles in discrete, regularly scheduled issues. For subscription-based online journals, the popularity of discrete issues is likely connected to the need to attract subscribers and to ensure that they receive a certain amount of content each year, usually in the form of a fixed number of issues of approximately the same size.
Open access (OA) journals, on the other hand, are costfree to read, so editors do not owe readers a certain amount of content at a certain frequency. Therefore, editors do not necessarily need to release discrete, complete issues on an established publication schedule. Rather, they have more flexibility to publish articles as they become ready, on a rolling basis, and publish however many or few meet the standards of the journal's editors and peer reviewers. One well-known journal that publishes in rolling volumes is PLoS ONE (http://www.plosone.org/). An extremely high-output journal, it published 23,468 articles in 2012 alone (Hoff, 2013). Far on the other end of the spectrum is Philosophers' Imprint (http://www.philosophersimprint. org/), a highly respected philosophy journal, which published only 118 articles between January 2001 and May 2013 ("Browse," 2013).
Given the success of journals such as PLoS ONE and Philosophers' Imprint, we decided to investigate how many OA journals currently publish in rolling volumes, and what reasons lead journal editors to choose one model (rolling volumes or discrete issues) over the other. Although the details, trends, and effects of OA publishing have been examined quite thoroughly in the library literature and elsewhere, we discovered that the topic had not been formally addressed online or in a library journal. In order to fill this significant gap in the literature, we decided to look into the question ourselves, starting with an investigation of the prevalence of the rolling-volume model in library and information science (LIS) journals.

LITERATURE REVIEW
As noted above, the existing literature contains no formal research concerning the publication schedule models of OA journals. What has been published falls into two categories: discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of the rolling-volume model and best practices guides for OA journal publishing. Authors and publishers referred to the rolling-volume model in a variety of ways: rolling publication, rolling schedule, rolling method, rolling system, rolling cycle, article-byarticle, continuous publication, article-based, article at a time, and publish as ready. We considered all of these variations when conducting the literature review. 1 With the OA movement acting as a catalyst for change in the world of scholarly publishing, the rolling-volume model, with its increased speed of publication and streamlined workflow, would seem particularly appealing to all concerned-the author, the reader, and the publisher (Morris, 2006, p. 3). As early as the late 1990s, publishers 1 We did not investigate the economics of OA scholarly publishing and thus excluded the subject from our literature review. Numerous other articles explore the economic aspects of OA and the business models of OA journals (see, for example, Bird, 2010;Bjork & Solomon, 2012;Crow, 2009;Harnad, 2010;Hindawi, 2009; "OA Journal Business Models," 2013; Swan & Chan, 2012).

Implications for Practice (cont'd):
• Editors of open access scholarly journals, as well as library publishing programs, can use the rationales discussed in the article to determine which publication model-rolling volumes or discrete issues-best meets their needs.
• As an emerging publication model, the rolling-volume model will inevitably evolve. This study provides a starting point for further exploration of the attributes, benefits, and future iterations of the rolling-volume model.

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were promoting the rolling-volume model to authors (for fast-tracking publication) and readers (for fast-tracking access) as the wave of the future (Woody, 1999;"Academic Press," 1999). Yet it took another 10 years for the National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) Working Group to develop a draft code of practice and guidelines for the delivery of online scholarly journal literature with the objective of "facilitating the digital publishing of one article at a time" (NFAIS, 2009, p. 27).
For the publisher, the production of the journal has many complications: staffing, technology, time, and-most of all-submissions. Rolling publication schedules "may be particularly attractive if you have difficulty publishing issues on time, whether this is due to lack of funds to pay for printing and distribution, or to a shortage of articles" (Morris, 2006, p. 3). Also, if the online version of a journal is not accompanied by a print version, then OA journals are free to abandon the practice of releasing only complete, assembled issues: "There is really no need to wait for a certain number of papers-amounting to a specific number of pages-to collate and paginate an issue" (Co-Action Publishing & Lund University Libraries, 2011). Blom suggested that "[p]erhaps only for topical issues the coherence and order of articles still [have] additional value. But for general science articles, aggregation into issues and volumes has become a redundant step" (2007, p. 83). David Solomon agreed: There is "little value in holding back articles for publication so that they can be distributed grouped in issues. The only exception would be when the articles are grouped in a compendium around a theme" (2008, p. 176).
The literature suggests that scholars themselves are focused on articles and not on discrete journal issues: "From discoverability (through interoperable repositories and search engines) to research evaluation, scholars' attention is all concentrated on the article level" (Cassella & Calvi, 2010, p. 8). In addition to caring more about articles than complete journal issues, authors value short turnaround times. Publishers of rolling-volume journals are aware of this preference, and some claim to be able to publish the peer-reviewed, final version of a submission within an average of six to eight weeks. One such publisher is Hindawi Publishing Corporation, whose Chief Strategy Officer, Paul Peters, stated, "In fields where progress can be measured in months rather than years, providing our authors with fast publication, while preparing their work in a professional manner, has been one of our main assets in attracting authors" (2007, p. 195).
Readers too benefit from article-by-article publishing, which does not involve quarantining articles until an issue is complete: "[A]n article can be published right after acceptance (with 'internal' pagination), thus speeding up the time from submission to publication" (Co-Action Publishing & Lund University Libraries, 2011). Maron and Smith suggested closing the "issue" every few months and giving it a volume and issue number in order to facilitate citing (2008, p. 19). Of course, publishers should "make sure that the publishing platform also has the navigation and ease of use to get users to information about the journal" (Brown, 2010, p. 87).
Some have expressed concern that the rolling-volume model might undermine the stability of the scholarly publishing universe as we know it: "In the worst-case scenario of disaggregation . . . it may not be clear what journal you are reading . . . sounding the death knell not only for the intellectual coherence of the journal itself but also for its financial stability" (Cutter, 2010, p. 79). Others, with perhaps clearer heads, are confident that: as the barriers to immediate publication are lowered, we do not need to sacrifice precision and recall, let alone validity. While moving forward with new technological capabilities, we can figure out how to maintain the best of the traditional model. We do not have to throw the baby out with the bath water. (Kaser, 2008, p. 16)

METHODS
For this study, which was the first formal examination of the prevalence of and reasons for different publication models among OA journals, we decided to limit our scope, as surveying the editors of the thousands of journals in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ, http://www. doaj.org) would have been a monumental project and likely would have had a poor response rate. Therefore, we restricted our study to library and information science (LIS) journals.
We selected LIS as our domain because we thought LIS editors would be receptive to a survey from librarians, which indeed they were. Also, because the LIS community is engaged with scholarly communication issues, we thought LIS editors might be more experimental with publication models than editors in other disciplines.

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Finally, because we are English speakers, we needed to limit our study to English-language journals; we ultimately narrowed further to U.S.-based OA LIS journals. Although the study would be small and not necessarily representative of the broader landscape of OA journals, it could provide some insights and indicate whether a broader study would be worthwhile.
We could have determined the journals' publication models without a survey, simply by visiting the journal websites, but tallying in that fashion would not have provided information about editors' reasons for or satisfaction with their model, or the likelihood of a future switch from one model to another. This additional information would make our study more informative and useful, so we developed a survey to send to editors. The survey asked editors about their publication model and then asked them to choose from a list of possible reasons why they use the model they use, with an opportunity to write in additional reasons. The survey also asked them whether the journal used to be published in a different model, how satisfied they are with the current model, and how likely they are to change the model in the future.
(See Appendix A for the full survey.) To determine U.S.-based OA LIS journals, we browsed the Library and Information Science section of the DOAJ. We knew that not all OA LIS journals were in DOAJ-for example, College & Research Libraries had recently gone OA but was not yet listed-but we suspected we were not aware of every OA LIS journal that did not appear, so we decided to limit the study to journals listed in DOAJ as of November 2011.
We then eliminated non-scholarly and inactive publications from our list of journals to contact. We determined scholarliness both by studying each journal's website for evidence of peer review or rigorous editorial review and by checking whether EBSCO databases categorized the journal as peer reviewed. We included one journal that has editorial review and a scholarly reputation despite the fact that EBSCO indicated it was not peer reviewed, and we also included several clearly scholarly journals that did not appear in EBSCO at all. We considered inactive any journal that had not published any articles since 2009. In the end, we had a list of 29 active scholarly U.S.-based OA LIS journals.
Next, we consulted the journal websites to determine each journal's top editor or coeditors, regardless of exact title. Then, after securing approval for human subjects research from our college's Institutional Review Board (IRB), we emailed the editors, asking them to complete the survey, which we made available through the online survey administration tool SurveyMonkey (http://www. surveymonkey.com), or to forward the email to the most appropriate member of the journal's editorial board. (See Appendix B for our email to editors.) We first contacted the editors in November 2011, and in December 2011 we re-sent the email to those who had not yet completed the survey.

RESULTS
We sent 29 invitations to take the survey, and we received 24 survey responses. However, we had to discard several responses. One respondent abandoned the survey after three questions, but someone else completed the survey for that journal, so we disregarded the incomplete response. Also, in the case of two journals with coeditors, the survey was completed twice, once by each coeditor. For one of those journals, one coeditor provided all the same information as the other coeditor plus more, so we kept the more informative response and discarded the less informative one. For the other journal, the two editors supplied slightly different but non-conflicting information; we merged these two into a single response, which replaced the two original responses. Not counting the discarded responses, there were 21 completed responses, for a response rate of 72%. When we applied for IRB approval, we promised to preserve respondents' anonymity, so we use no journal titles or editor names in our discussion.
Of the journals for which we collected responses, 12 publish in discrete issues and eight publish in rolling volumes. We also received a response for a journal that publishes in rolling volumes with occasional special issues; we treated that journal as a ninth rolling-volume journal.
Editors of journals that publish in discrete volumes were presented with 16 possible reasons for employing discrete volumes, as well as an opportunity to indicate additional reasons. The most commonly selected reason was "Discrete issues make production workflow easier," reported by 11 editors. The next two most popular reasons were "Discrete issues make production deadlines more meaningful and therefore more likely to be heeded" and "Publishing discrete issues makes it easier to publicize and promote the journal," each of which was chosen by nine editors. Table 1 gives the full tally of reasons for publishing in discrete issues.
Editors of journals that publish in rolling volumes were presented with 13 possible reasons for choosing rolling volumes, as well as a place to indicate additional reasons. The number of possible reasons was lower for rolling volumes simply because we could not think of as many possible reasons as we did for discrete issues. For rolling volumes, the three most popular reasons were "Rolling volumes improve production workflow" (seven editors), "Rolling volumes decrease reliance on production deadlines" (seven editors), and "Rolling volumes speed the dissemination of information" (six editors). For the full tally of reasons for publishing in rolling volumes, see Table 2 (following page).
As Table 2 shows, two journals have rolling volumes for reasons other than those we suggested. One respondent, representing a journal that publishes conference proceedings, wrote, "An annual themed volume works well for our model. The theme of each year's volume is the same as the corresponding conference." For the other journal, "not depending on deadlines keeps things flexible." Reviewing the responses, we immediately noticed that workflow was the most cited factor for both kinds of journals. It is not surprising that editors value streamlined workflow, and it is also not surprising that different workflows work better for different journals. However, the fact that editors of both kinds of journals favor their own workflow suggests that editors tend to see the workflow they employ as preferable to the alternatives, regardless of the specifics of that workflow.

Why is the journal published in discrete issues? Response Count Response Percent
Discrete issues make production workflow easier. 11 91.7% Discrete issues make production deadlines more meaningful and therefore more likely to be heeded.

75.0%
Publishing discrete issues makes it easier to publicize and promote the journal. 9 75.0% Discrete issues make open access journals seem more like traditional journals and therefore more respectable in the eyes of some.

66.7%
Publishing discrete issues makes it easier to solicit manuscripts and issue calls for papers. 7 58.3% We think readers prefer discrete issues. 7 58.3% We sometimes or always publish themed issues, and discrete issues make sense for themed issues.

41.7%
We think authors prefer discrete issues. 4 33.3% The journal is open access online but is also still published in print. 2 16.7% Concerns about indexing prevent us from transitioning to rolling volumes. 2 16.7% Our journal-publishing platform makes discrete issues easier than rolling volumes. 2 16.7% We think promotion and tenure committees prefer discrete issues. 2 16.7% Publishing discrete issues is the norm in the field of library and information science. 2 16.7% We sell or are considering selling print-on-demand issues of the journal. 1 8.3% The journal used to be a print journal, and we've kept its former volume/issue scheme. 1 8.3% We never considered the question; this is just what we do. 1 8.3% Other (please explain) 0 0.0% Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication | jlsc-pub.org JL SC Some reasons were selected by fewer journals than we anticipated. For example, only two editors of discreteissue journals indicated that they think promotion and tenure committees prefer discrete issues. We expected more editors to worry that promotion and tenure committees would have unwarranted prejudices against nontraditional publication models, and fear that those prejudices would affect authors' decisions about where to submit their articles. The biggest surprise for us was that no editors of rolling-volume journals reported switching from discrete issues because of erratic publication schedules. We expected erratic past publishing to be a factor for some, as we are aware of several OA LIS journals with highly erratic, arguably problematic publishing schedules.
Of the 12 discrete-issue journals, none previously published in rolling volumes. However, of the nine rolling-volume journals, one formerly published in discrete volumes. This finding is not surprising: Rolling volumes are a newer model than discrete issues, and editors are more likely to transition from an old model to a new model than vice versa.
Also, all nine of the rolling-volume editors reported being very satisfied with their model of publication. Satisfaction was less widespread among the 12 discrete-issue editors: Seven reported being very satisfied with their model, three were somewhat satisfied, one was neutral, and one was somewhat dissatisfied. The newness of the rolling-volume model possibly plays into editor satisfaction: Because rolling volumes are too new to be the norm, editors who choose rolling volumes likely do so thoughtfully, and therefore are more likely to be satisfied with their choice.
Relatedly, all nine rolling-volume editors reported being very unlikely to change their publication model. Among the 12 discrete-issue editors, the future is less clear: Five were very unlikely to change to rolling volumes, four were somewhat unlikely, two were neutral, and one was somewhat likely. These mixed responses suggest that there is broad awareness of rolling volumes and some deliberation about changing models.
The survey ended with an invitation to share other relevant information. The most substantive comments about discrete issues were as follows (edited to fix typos and preserve anonymity): • "It works well for us. We feel we have the best of both worlds: a print edition that reaches all our members and is satisfying to hold in the hand (and We used to publish discrete issues, but our publication schedule was erratic. 0 0.0% We think promotion and tenure committees prefer rolling volumes 0 0.0% We never considered the question; this is just what we do. 0 0.0% a physical benefit for members and authors alike), and an online version that can be easily accessed from anywhere, by anyone, at any time." • "It's worked fairly well. The major challenge has been keeping the editorial board going and recruiting new members. Issues of time commitment, work, sustainability. . . . A blog was added and will be continued at a low level for book reviews and other time-sensitive items." • "We really think readers 'prefer' discrete issues, or rather that discrete issues get reader attention better, whether or not they say they prefer it: When a new issue comes out, readers go to read it, or at least skim the table of contents. If there could be new content at any time, we think many readers end up never visiting to see if there is new content, and ignoring the journal. Theoretically readers could use RSS feeds that would tell them whenever new content was available on a 'rolling' basis. But we think in practice, discrete issues captures reader attention better." For rolling volumes, the most relevant comments were the following (again, edited to fix typos and preserve anonymity): • "Enabled by technological developments, rolling volumes (continuous online publishing) speeds up publications cycle for everyone (publisher, author, reader) and thus is a preferable model." • "Flexibility is really key to making this work. We are flexible with what we publish as well. So we'll publish papers as well as presentations, archived websites, poster presentations, etc."

DISCUSSION
When we began our research, we did not expect to find such prevalence of rolling volumes. Because librarians often document their scholarly and professional choices in the library literature, the paucity of articles about rolling volumes or publication models in general led us to believe that rolling volumes would be somewhat rare. Therefore, we were surprised that nine of the 21 responding journals publish in rolling volumes. Apparently, many LIS journal editors are choosing rolling volumes in the absence of scholarly treatments of the subject. With PLoS ONE and other prominent journals in other fields leading the way, demonstrating by example the reasons for and benefits of rolling volumes, the case for rolling volumes seems to have been made outside the library literature. Further investigation is also warranted into the finding that editors of both kinds of journals feel that their respective models optimize workflow. How do workflows differ, both between the models and among journals of the same model? Are workflow preferences simply a matter of editorial temperament, or are there concrete reasons for choosing one workflow over another?
Finally, our research would be complemented by a study of the preferences of authors and readers, the other major stakeholders in scholarly publishing. Do regular readers of a journal prefer to learn of articles as they are released, via email, RSS feed, Twitter, etc.? Or do they prefer to receive periodic announcements of issues or lists of recent articles? Authors, we assume, wish to be published as soon as possible, but do they prefer to be published as their articles become ready or in a standardized issue format? OA journals of all kinds would benefit from an investigation into these questions.

CONCLUSION
It has been almost 15 years since the rolling-volume publication model was introduced, and a significant percentage of U.S.-based OA LIS journals now publish in rolling volumes. This emergence of rolling volumes has occurred despite the fact that the LIS community is under less pressure than the scientific and medical communities to publish research findings as soon as possible. Nevertheless, LIS scholars appreciate quick publication times, especially for articles on emerging trends and timely topics, and our study shows that LIS journal editors care about attracting and accommodating contributors and readers. Also, the study reveals that more editors at rolling-volume journals are satisfied with their model than those at discrete-issue journals. Therefore, we strongly suspect that the rolling-volume model will become even more prevalent in coming years, both for LIS journals and in other disciplines. 2 Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication | jlsc-pub.org

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11. How likely is your journal to switch to discrete issues in the foreseeable future? a. very likely b. somewhat likely c. neutral d. somewhat unlikely e. very unlikely 12. Is there anything else you'd like to say about your journal's publication model?

Recruitment Email
Dear Journal Editor, We are two academic librarians interested in open access publishing models. Specifically, we are investigating how many scholarly open access journals in library and information science publish discrete issues and how many publish on a rolling-volume basis. We have created a short survey that asks editors about their journal's publication model, reasons behind the choice of that model, satisfaction with it, and likelihood of changing it.
We are contacting you because we have determined that you are the primary editor of a scholarly open access journal in library and information science. We would greatly appreciate it if you would take the survey, which should require no more than 10 minutes of your time.
(If you are no longer the primary editor, we would appreciate it if you would forward this message to the current primary editor(s). Or, if you feel you are not the best person to take the survey, we would appreciate it if you would forward this message to whomever would be the most appropriate respondent.) We have obtained Institutional Research Board (IRB) approval from our campus for this research, and participation is entirely voluntary. The survey asks you to name your journal and your title at the journal, but only so we can keep track of respondents and send follow-up invitations. We will not refer to people by name or title, or journals by name, in any resulting publications or presentations.
We hope that you'll consider completing the survey. If you choose to take the survey, please do so by November 25, 2011.
To take the survey, please go to: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/37LMYBG Thank you, Professors Sally Bowdoin and Jill Cirasella Brooklyn College, CUNY