Modern academic publishing moves fast. Readers and authors expect accepted articles to be available as soon as possible — not weeks or months later when an issue is finally assembled. This practice goes by many names: early access, online first, ahead of print, or forthcoming articles.
Major publishers like Springer, Elsevier, and Wiley have offered this for years. But what about journals running on Open Journal Systems?
The Problem: OJS Doesn’t Support Early Access Natively
OJS is designed around the traditional model: articles are assigned to issues, and issues are published. There’s no built-in mechanism for publishing individual articles independently of an issue.
This creates a frustrating bottleneck. You might have three articles fully reviewed, edited, and ready to go — but you’re waiting for two more to complete the issue. Meanwhile, authors are asking when their work will be publicly available, and readers are missing out on timely research.
Common Workarounds (And Their Downsides)
Journals have tried several approaches to work around this limitation:
1. The “Early Release” Issue Trick
Create a special issue titled “Early Release” or “Online First” and assign accepted articles to it. When the real issue is ready, move articles from the early release issue to the final one.
Problems:
- Articles change URLs when moved between issues, breaking existing links and citations
- DOIs may need to be updated
- Readers who bookmarked the early release version get confused
- It’s manual, error-prone work for editors
2. Continuous Publishing
OJS supports continuous publishing, where articles are published as they’re ready without traditional issues. But this is an all-or-nothing approach — you can’t use it alongside regular issue-based publishing.
Problems:
- Doesn’t work if your journal publishes numbered issues (most do)
- No reader notifications for individual articles
- Loses the organizational structure of issues
3. Publishing Incomplete Issues
Some journals publish an issue with whatever articles are ready, then add more later.
Problems:
- The table of contents keeps changing
- Readers and indexing services see an incomplete issue
- It looks unprofessional
A Better Approach: Dedicated Early Access Block
The Early Access Block plugin solves this problem directly. It adds a sidebar block to your journal that displays accepted articles before they’re assigned to an issue.
How It Works
- When an article is accepted and the galley (PDF/HTML) is ready, you mark it for early access
- The article appears in the “Early Access” block on your journal’s homepage
- Readers can access the full article with its permanent URL
- When you’re ready to publish the full issue, the article moves to the issue — same URL, no broken links
- The article automatically disappears from the early access block
Benefits Over Workarounds
- Permanent URLs — articles keep the same URL throughout the process
- No issue shuffling — no need to create fake “early release” issues
- Automatic — articles move from early access to the issue seamlessly
- Professional appearance — a clean sidebar block with article metadata
- Reader engagement — visitors see fresh content on every visit, not just when issues are published
What Readers See
The early access block displays on your journal’s sidebar with:
- Article title (linked to the full text)
- Author names
- “Early Access” label
- Section name
It integrates with your journal’s existing theme and doesn’t require any template customization.
Who Benefits from Early Access Publishing?
Authors get their work cited sooner. In competitive fields, being available weeks earlier can matter for priority claims and career advancement.
Readers get access to the latest research without waiting for issue compilation. This is especially important for rapidly evolving fields.
Journals show activity between issues. A journal that publishes new content continuously appears more active and engaged than one that goes silent for months between issues.
Indexing services can pick up articles sooner, improving your journal’s visibility in databases like Google Scholar, Scopus, and Web of Science.
Getting Started
The Early Access Block plugin installs through the Plugin Gallery in minutes. Upload the ZIP, enable it, and configure the sidebar position. Articles can be added to early access through the standard editorial workflow.
If your journal publishes on a regular schedule but wants to give readers faster access to accepted work, early access publishing is the way forward.