Forwarding this from a colleague in the serial industry...

Please send to me personally at Naomi@uflib.ufl.edu, or direct to the
originator of the message (zeditor@sunflower.com); I will summarize for the
list responses I receive.

Calling all librarians -- I know you're out there. <g> For several years
now we have published annual supplements containing Web-exclusive articles
that appeared on our site during the past six months. We have never
numbered these supplements but have simply referred to them as
"supplements" for the purposes of mailing requirements. The articles are
typeset and paginated in a numbering scheme that is separate from the
regular in-print volumes (for example, articles on the Web in 2004 would be
numbered W4-nn, and so on). They are identified by their date of posting
instead of a volume/issue number. (A picture is worth a thousand words: see
content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/reprint/hlthaff.w4.534v1 for a live
example.)

Our preference for articles in these supplements is to have them cited by
their online identifiers (date of posting, URL, no page numbers). However,
it's been pointed out to us that having the supplements numbered could
allow authors to cite Web-exclusive articles as in-print publications for
skittish tenure committees who *still* don't view online publishing (even
in a peer-reviewed environment) as counting toward publishing requirements.

Here's the problem. Because of production lag times, we publish the Web
articles from July-December of a given year in a supplement that is mailed
with the second issue (Mar/Apr) of the following year. Articles from
January-June of a given year are published in a supplement mailed with the
fifth issue (Sep/Oct) of the same year.

We could number our supplements in one of two ways, either of which is
bound to confuse and annoy someone. Option 1 would be to number them with
the volume year in which the articles appeared on the Web, even though the
actual supplement volume wouldn't be produced until the next year (so
supplement 1 of vol. 23, 2004, would consist of articles published in
Jan-June 2004 but wouldn't be produced until Sept. 2004; supplement 2 of
vol. 23, 2004, would be produced in March 2005). Option 2 would be to
number the supplements according to when the in-print supplement is
produced, regardless of whether the articles themselves were produced that
year or the prior year (so supplement 1 of vol. 24, 2005, would contain
articles from July-Dec 2004 and would come out in March 2005; supplement 2
of vol. 24, 2005, would contain articles from Jan-June 2005 and would come
out in Sept 2005).

Do those of you who manage citations and journal collections have a
preference for which of two evils we should pursue? Does it really matter?
Should we bother? Many thanks, and sorry for the convoluted explanation.
----
End forwarded message.

Naomi K. Young
Principal Serials Cataloger
Cataloging & Metadata Dept.
University of Florida
naomi@uflib.ufl.edu
352 392-0355 ext. 234
My title has changed, but my contact information has not.