[_delirium]

It's pretty common in many areas of science to release intermediate stuff frequently. In CS, for example, the typical practice is to publish papers a few times a year in conference proceedings, documenting current progress. You can also publish on arXiv, or in technical reports, if you have additional stuff that doesn't fit nicely in a conference. Journals don't really hold anything up, since they've been relegated to more of an archival role. They're rarely the first place anything is published, just the place where it's tied into a bow and deposited for posterity.

[takluyver]

That's good to hear - my discipline, biology, isn't quite so forward thinking.