Continuous publication marks a significant shift in BMJ’s publishing cycle. From now on we will be populating bmj.com with lots of new content on a daily basis, instead of using the weekly print issue as the catalyst for a mass upload of articles. The homepage will change more frequently (as well as the pages showing latest news, research comment and education), and there will be a rolling table of contents that will show every article published in the past seven days. You will still be able to access an electronic version of the print issue table of contents, but everything in it will have been posted online first.
This is why we decided to make the link to the new seven day table of contents higher up on the page than the link to the print issue one. The “last seven days” table of contents will show across all pages on the site, to make it easier for people to access the latest content.
Some of our regular visitors to bmj.com voluteered to try out our new approach. Their feedback was invaluable. All of them understood what we were trying to do and why, and replacing the link to the print issue icon with the latest seven days made sense to all of them. We hope you agree.
Many of you subscribe to email alerts from bmj.com, and we’ve made some small changes there. If you currently get the table of contents emailed to you each week, you will now get the one that lists everything published in the last seven days, rather than the print issue one. Again, this is because everything in the print issue will already have been published online first. You can now also opt to get these on a daily rather than weekly basis.
In a nutshell, our aim is to constantly update bmj.com with the latest research, news and comment, so that each time you visit there’s something new to read, watch, listen to and interact with.
Talking of which, if you have any comments or questions, have your say on the blog. And to find out more about continuous publication, look at the FAQs we’ve developed or read the editorial from the editor, Fiona Godlee.
David Payne is editor, bmj.com