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Is continuous article publishing (CAP) a good thing?

Many journals are making the transition to CAP. It seems to alleviate costs for publishers. Also, I suppose it is a natural thing, in view of the fact that nowadays most academic literature is read online.

It is claimed to be a good thing to authors because it substantially speeds up the final publication, with the correct citation. However, in Mathematics, the dissemination of an article to the peopĺe interested usually occurs much before the actual publication; in addition, in the case of application to grants, the acceptance of a paper is enough, as opposed to the final publication.

Edit: https://www.editage.com/insights/what-is-the-meaning-of-a-journal-moving-to-continuous-article-publication

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  • I don't see how it would be a bad thing in particular. Just about all journals I follow incrementally add to issues. It does not seem to have caused any problems.
    – Jon Custer
    Commented Apr 22 at 18:06
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    Perhaps add a description (or a link) so that those of us who are not familiar with the term "continuous article publishing" can catch up.
    – user95861
    Commented Apr 23 at 6:49
  • In Continuous Publishing, as soon as the final proofed version of the article is ready, it gets immediately added to the current issue. So no waiting around for it to be scheduled into a future issue.
    – Bob
    Commented Apr 23 at 16:10

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"However, in Mathematics, the dissemination of an article to the peopĺe interested usually occurs much before the actual publication" -- well, mathematics isn't the only field, isn't it? Preprints are increasingly common across the sciences-broadly-construed, but there are only a few fields where it can be assumed articles exist in preprint form. In the humanities, they remain rare.

Given preprints are only a ~guarantee in a few fields, which don't include the particularly prolific fields of biology or medicine, one can't make a confident assumption that articles are disseminated long before their publication. Frankly, reading most preprints in PDF form isn't too convenient either, given their formatting/lack thereof. ("Tables 1-12 go here" -- yeah, thanks.) Accordingly, I can't see a way continuous publishing wouldn't be a good thing. In some fields it's maybe a little superfluous, but these are unrepresentative of scholarly fields as a whole.

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    I've never seen incomplete public preprints with placeholders. Normally they are put on a preprint server just before journal submission (and usually updated there after referee comments)
    – andybuckley
    Commented Apr 27 at 8:33

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