Does the journal offer the option of early online publication?

Many journals facilitate early online publication, commonly termed "Online First" or "Advance Online Publication," allowing peer-reviewed, accepted articles to be publicly accessible before formal issue compilation and assignment. This service is offered across numerous scholarly fields by publishers to expedite dissemination. Eligibility typically requires final acceptance of the manuscript following peer review and successful completion of all author production tasks, such as proof corrections and formatting adherence. The timeframe between acceptance and early online posting varies but often occurs within several weeks. Crucially, early online articles possess unique identifiers (like a Digital Object Identifier - DOI) and are fully citable as the version of record, though pagination and specific issue details are finalized later. This mechanism accelerates research impact by enabling immediate visibility and citation. Authors benefit from timely scholarly contribution acknowledgment. Implementation involves the publisher uploading the finalized manuscript to their platform upon completing post-acceptance processing, clearly marking it as published online ahead of print inclusion.