Online first publication

To minimise publication times and ensure that important data reach readers and the public as quickly as possible we now post online research articles as soon as they are ready, before print publication. This applies mainly to research articles but may also apply to articles in other sections, such as editorials, education and debate, etc. You will be told by the technical editor handling your paper if this will happen to your paper.

Online first articles are edited in the normal way. Once you have approved the proof we will post the article as a PDF on (www.londonjournalofprimarycare.org)

If we decide to press release your article we will issue the press release at the time of online publication. The article (or, if it is to be abridged using our ELPS electronic long, paper short process, the short version) will then also appear in an issue of the print journal a few weeks later.

An online first article is not a “pre-print”. It represents the full publication of that article. At the time of posting the bibliographic information is forwarded to PubMed and other indexing agencies, so the article can be searched for and found on bibliographical databases and can be cited as published (the citation format appears at the top of the online article).

Because an online first article is formally published, we handle any mistakes in them as proper corrections. If an error is spotted before print publication it will be corrected in the print version and a corrected online version will be posted at the same time as the print version is published. Only in exceptional circumstances will we publish a corrected version of an article between online and print publication.