Our First Online service provides access to peer reviewed articles well before print publication. Publication of articles in a printed journal can last several months. Even if peer-review process, revision, final acceptance, typesetting, and proof-reading have been successfully performed, it happens often enough that the papers cannot be printed immediately but have to wait for the next available issue.
With First Online, articles can be published shortly after their acceptance by reviewers, authors, and editors, which means weeks or months before they will appear in the printed journal and even before the issue number and the true page numbers have been determined. Careful proof-reading is a pre-requirement.
Publication date of the article is the Online Publication Date which is indicated in both First Online and the printed article.
First Online is no pre-print service - the publications are in their final form; they cannot be changed anymore nor withdrawn. However, an Erratum can be added. For the publication in the printed journal, only the final page numbers, the citation line, and the online publication date will be added.
Citation of First Online articles: They can be cited by the Digital Object Identifier - DOI which is an identification code and included in both the print (not for issues printed before 31 October 2007) and electronic versions (http://www.doi.org).
When the First Online articles have an OOA symbol, they are accessible for all readers, access to all other articles is limited to users/subscribers. These articles are searchable and citeable by their DOI (Digital Object Identifier).