Do they know about previous submission history of my article?

Question

I got my article rejected from two journals in a row as they think my work is not suitable for submission in their journals. It was my fault that I could not properly understand the aim and scope of these journals. Now I am submitting my work to a third journal after thoroughly checking the aim and scope along with already published articles related to my field.

My question is, as I will not provide the previous rejection history of my article to the third journal, would this third journal have any information about the rejection history of my article ?

Answer 1

There's at least two types of rejections:

1. Desk rejection where the editor says an article is out of scope.
2. Rejection upon review where the editor in consultation with the reviewers' recommendations rejects the paper for publication.

For a great description of the process, see here.

Forgive the convoluted wording on the second one -- basically, it means your paper was reviewed and then rejected. The precise relation between the reviewer's reviews and the outcome varies by journal, but it is the editor who ultimately rejects.

In contrast, a "desk rejection" means that the article never went to reviewers and was rejected upon receipt due to some issue -- scope? formatting? bad English?

If you got a desk rejection, the odds that the next journal or reviewers will know anything about this paper is nil. If you were rejected post-review, then it's quite possible (and in some fields probable) that the same people might be reviewers even for a different journal.

Answer 2

It depends. Reviewer work for often for more than one journal. Depending on the size of the community in your area and how specific your problem is, there is a good chance that a reviewer has read the previous version of your paper.