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Journals That Want to Know Where an Article Has Been Submitted Before?

Brian Leiter

A philosopher writes with a pretty startling report of a phenomenon I had not heard of previously:

I recently submitted an article to a journal that uses online Editorial Management software.  In general, I like this way of handling submissions.  But on this recent occasion, there was a step in the process that I'd not seen before.   In the process of entering information on the manuscript, I was asked if the manuscript had previously been submitted elsewhere and, if so, where it had been submitted. Furthermore, this was a required step in the submission process.  I don't think I'd even been asked this before.  I've since come to find out that at least two other journals from the same publisher [Springer] ask for the same information.  So here are my questions:
 
(1) How widespread is this practice?
 
(2) Is the use of this practice increasing?

(2) Is whether or not the manuscript has been submitted elsewhere (and where) relevant?

(3) Even if it's relevant, is asking for this information justified?

 
I can not think of any meritorious justification for this process–it seems intended either to (1) short-circuit the review process by piggy-backing on the work of other journals, or (2) maintain a journal's position in a perceived pecking-order by making sure not to accept articles rejected by perceivec competitors and "inferiors."  Thoughts from readers?  If you are going to name particular journals, you will need to sign your name to the comment.  All comments must include a valid e-mail address in any case (which will not appear).
 
UPDATE:   Do see the comments from Simon Kirchin, below.

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12 responses to “Journals That Want to Know Where an Article Has Been Submitted Before?”

  1. Jonathan Ichikawa

    Is the language clear? One question I'd wonder right away is whether authors were merely being asked whether their papers were currently under review anywhere else.

    Reply
  2. Gabriele Contessa

    I've come across this before on Editorial Manager and, applying the principle of charity, I took it to be an admittedly ill-formulated but otherwise quite understandable question. My understanding is that the question would be better formulated: 'Is your paper currently being considered elsewhere?'.

    Reply
  3. Mark

    Just to clarify: it is asking the submitting author whether the paper is now under review at some other journal, right, not whether it has at any time been under review at some other journal?

    If the former, it's not surprising that one is asked this, since multiple simultaneous submission is not the norm in philosophy. As for asking for the names of the other journals, Editorial Manager is used in journals in lots of disciplines, including disciplines where multiple submission is typically allowed; I wonder whether this might be just be EM's standard form for journals that want to inquire as to multiple submission.

    Reply
  4. Ross Cameron

    The language isn't very clear, but what they say can be interpreted as asking whether the paper is *currently* under submission at another journal, so that's how I've always chosen to interpret it. So just say no.

    Reply
  5. Graham Macdonald

    is it possible that the information is asked for so as to avoid approaching referees who have already reviewed the paper for another journal?

    Reply
  6. Catarina Dutilh Novaes

    I agree with the previous comments: it is quite likely that the question actually refers to simultaneous submissions of the same paper. Either way, I think there is a very easy way to negotiate this requirement: simply say 'No, the paper has not been previously submitted elsewhere'. Technically, this will be true in 99% of the cases, I suspect; if a given paper has been submitted somewhere and rejected, chances are you have changed it quite a bit in the meantime, so technically it is not 'the same paper' anyway.

    Reply
  7. Enzyme

    I've recently come across the same question in respect of a submission to a Springer journal. It does worry me somewhat – you can't help wondering whether your paper'll be punished for having gone somewhere else first. Because my paper was slightly interdisciplinary – too bioethics-y for the non-bioethics journals, too philosophical for the medical law journals, too legal for the philosophical ones – it's gathered quite a list of submissions. I don't think that's because it's a bad paper – rather because its hard to categorise. But the list of rejections does look like it's probably going to be terrible, and I fear that that might be a problem.

    Reply
  8. Benjamin

    As far as I know, the question appears in Springer's online editorial manager for every journal. Its exact formulation is the following:

    'Have you submitted this article elsewhere? If yes, please indicate which journal.'

    It might be good to ask one of the editors of a Springer journal about how the question is to be taken.

    Reply
  9. Simon Kirchin

    I'm one of the editors of Ethical Theory and Moral Practice. I've just talked with my fellow editors, who are happy for me to write. In response to Benjamin and for everyone else:
    (i) We simply don't take this information into account. And indeed…
    (ii) …from our side of Ed Manager it takes a click of a link from a number of options, plus scrolling down a lot of other information, for us to get hold of the information about previous submissions. It is an awkward little search for something we don't want or need. We don't get this information automatically when we look at a paper or the bare details of author, affiliation, address, etc.
    (iii) I have to confess that not having sent things to a Springer journal myself recently I didn't even know about this question. (That itself should be instructive!) We have recently had a change of editorial liaison at Springer and we will take this issue up with them and see if, at least, we can get a more unambiguous formulation of the question for ETMP. All that we do care about is that a paper is not under consideration elsewhere.

    Hope this helps. Best wishes,

    Reply
  10. anon

    While we are on the subject of the "Editorial Manager", one aspect of the system that has always concerned me is that it keeps/highlights information about one's past rejections with a journal. While I am sure that journals which do not use this system have this information stored somewhere, it concerns me that in the Editorial Manager this information about the author's history will be one of the first things an editor sees, and so will unfairly prejudice the submission. Perhaps those on the editor's end could shed some light on how and when this information presents itself to them.

    Reply
  11. Simon Kirchin

    Hello anon and all,

    Again, I'm speaking only for ETMP.

    To get to this information – previous submissions to the journal – one needs to click on a page that we hardly ever click on to get a pop-up, scroll down and then click again to get another pop-up, then scroll down. Again, we simply don't look at this information in making a decision about a paper, either deciding whether to send it out for review, or when we have reviews in from referees. (All we do is read the paper ourselves – normally two of the five person editorial team – and then, if the paper is sent out, consider the refs' comments.) To emphasize a point from my previous post in a slightly different way: Over the past day I have learnt an awful lot about the sort of information we have at our disposal! We simply don't look at this stuff.

    I understand, however, that as an author one might worry that this could be used againt one and in some way prejudice one's submission. All I can do here is to repeat that we don't use this sort of information at ETMP and that we will discuss this with Springer, at least in respect of our journal. (As earlier posters have pointed out, these things are standard across Springer, so we may have no leeway in changing them.)

    Best wishes,

    Reply
  12. Eric Rasmusen

    The system of peer review is really very inefficient. Referees at Journal A carefully read a paper and reject it. Then referees at Journal B do the same job over again. What would be much more useful in picking good papers than knowing where a paper has been rejected would be seeing the referee reports. That would also prevent Journal B from using the same referees, which would prevent an author's enemy from killing his paper at each journal in turn.

    Note that evidence from previous rejections is not always negative. If a paper went through two rounds of revision at a top journal and then was barely rejected, with some referees highly favorable, that would be an easy acceptance at a second-rank journal. It's like knowing that someone was interviewed by Princeton, flew out and gave a job talk, but was only their second choice.

    Reply

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