Understanding research ethics
Simultaneous submissions
#EditorObservations 23 Simultaneous submissions (YouTube, 1m 5s)
It is not acceptable to submit the same manuscript to two different publication outlets. I can understand the temptation of wanting to do that to speed up publication, but it is unethical and extremely unkind to the people involved in assessing the manuscript simultaneously. Nowadays it is also highly risky because most publishers automatically identify simultaneous submissions and forward a report to the editors. From my experience, both of the editors involved reject these papers because of research misconduct.
One manuscript – one journal at a time.
#editorobservation
It’s not OK to submit a paper to more than 1 journal at the same time.
It’s unethical & disrespectful of editors + reviewers who dedicate time to assessing your submission.
Online submission systems alerts editors to manuscripts that have been submitted to more than 1 journal, leaving then no option but to desk-reject. Not a good outcome.
Prevent an unnecessary desk rejection.
Send your manuscript to one journal only.
Should your submission be rejected, you are free to submit it to another journal. The wise thing to do is to take the rejection feedback on board & carefully rework the manuscript before resubmitting elsewhere.
#editorobservation
Another tragic instance of lack of PhD + ECR mentoring apparent in an Annals of Tourism Research submission.
Simultaneously submitting a manuscript to more than one journal is not OK, no matter how much publication pressure you are under.
Read Multiple, duplicate, concurrent publication/simultaneous submission to learn more.
#editorobservation
Researchers are increasingly under pressure to publish anything anywhere as their employers have embraced quantitative research metrics as performance indicators. [This is a very counterproductive development in terms of knowledge creation, of course, because really big ideas rarely emerge under time pressure.]
Probably in response to this publication pressure, authors now increasingly resort to the unethical practise of submitting their manuscript to multiple journals simultaneously.
Chances are high this strategy will not work (journal editors are alerted automatically to potential duplicate submissions).
But what this practise does achieve with certainty is that it substantially increases the administrative burden on editors. As a result, editors have less time to process legitimate submissions, delaying outcome notifications to the authors of those submissions.
A lose-lose-lose scenario, which is best avoided.
#editorobservation
It’s not very classy to submit a manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. I totally understand how frustrating it is to wait for journals to make decisions, but it does not justify simultaneous submissions.
Keep in mind that most publishers detect duplicate submissions.
Avoid the drama. Submit to one journal at a time.
