There is a permanent pressure on journal editors both from the side of authors and of publishers to reduce publication delays as much as possible. There are, nevertheless, cases when excessive hurry is uncommendable.

Two papers published in Scientometrics Volume 113, Issue 3:

  • Victoria Bakare, Grant Lewison (2017) Country over-citation ratios. Scientometrics 113(3), 1199–1207. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2490-z,

  • Juan Miguel Campanario (2017) JIF-Plots: using plots of citations versus citable items as a tool to study journals and subject categories and discover new scientometric relationships. Scientometrics 113(3), 1141–1154. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2506-8

were originally intended to be published in the Special Issue dedicated to the memory of Eugene Garfield (the present issue).

This is the rare case when the Editors apologize the authors for the unduly rapid publication of their paper, and kindly ask the readers of the present issue to consider them a contribution to this memorial compilation.