Impact of prior electronic publication on manuscript consideration policies of scholarly journals

The purpose of this research was to study current policies and practices of scholarly journals on evaluating manuscripts for publication that had been previously published electronically. Various electronic forms were considered: a manuscript having been e‐mailed to members of a listserv, attached to a personal or institutional home page, stored in an electronic preprint collection, or published in an electronic proceedings or electronic journal. Factors that might affect the consideration of such manuscripts were also examined, including characteristics of the journal, the previously published work, and the submitted manuscript. A sample of 202 scholarly journals in the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities was selected for study. A questionnaire and cover letters were sent to the journal editors in the summer and fall of 1997, with an overall return rate of 57.4%. Results are reported for all journals, with comparisons being made between journals edited in the Unites States and outside the Unites States, by journal impact factor, and by discipline. The findings suggest that editorial policies regarding prior electronic publication are in an early stage of development. Most journal editors do not have a formal policy regarding the evaluation of work previously published in electronic form, nor are they currently evaluating such a policy. Editors disagreed widely on the importance of the various factors that might affect their decision to consider a work previously published electronically. The form or type of prior electronic publication was an important variable. Although some editors currently have a fairly rigid and negative posture towards work previously published electronically, most are willing to consider certain forms of such work for publication in their journals. Probably the most significant results of the study were the many differences in practices among scholarly disciplines. The findings of this study reveal how the Internet and the World Wide Web are currently affecting manuscript consideration policies of scholarly journals at this early stage of Web and Internet publishing.