Editor rejected manuscript claiming it is similar to a not-yet-published manuscript (that I haven't seen). How to proceed?

Question

A few months ago, I submitted a manuscript. After the reviews were completed I received a rejection decision from the Associate Editor (AE). The rejection was based on the basis of a single rejection recommendation by one of the four reviewers. The journal has very high standards so this is not uncommon. However, the reason for the rejection appears really awkward to me. The reviewer wrote in his/her report that another paper with a similar idea was submitted (not published) in another journal. He/she wrote that the submission date of the other paper was earlier than mine so the originality of my idea is questionable. The AE agreed with this report and adopted this argument in the rejection letter.

I want to emphasize that my results were independently developed and I have no knowledge whatsoever of the other manuscript which according to the reports that were attached has not been published yet. The whole situation seems rather awkward and I am not sure how to react. Of course the reviewer's identity is not known to me, but I find it hard to believe that he/she is not an author or somehow related to the author of the other paper.

Furthermore, I feel really offended by these comments as it appears to me that I am implicitly being accused of plagiarism. I am considering writing a letter to the Editor in Chief. I do not want to change the decision, but I would like to make clear that my results were independently obtained. Also, what are your thoughts on how should I proceed with my manuscript?

Answer 1

I don't think there is any point in writing to the EiC, if you don't want to actually appeal the decision. I would simply send a note to the AE who handled the paper:

Thank you for handling my paper. I accept your decision. I would simply like to state that the results in my paper were obtained independently, and I had no previous knowledge of the unpublished manuscript mentioned by Reviewer #4. I will look forward to reading and citing this paper when it becomes publicly available.

Then submit your paper somewhere else, quickly (though after making any revisions suggested by these reviewers). I would be inclined to include a comment to the new journal's editor, saying that you have heard there is a paper under review somewhere with similar results, but you have been unable to obtain a copy of the paper or any further information about it. You could also emphasize that you have obtained your results independently of any other reseacher / group.

Answer 2

There are many cases of simultaneous discoveries in history, so don’t let others take your credit when it’s not justified. This story could also be inspiring.

1. If your field has a preprint culture and your target journals allow for this, publish a pre-print of your paper immediately. This way you can establish with a certain confidence that you arrived at your results independently – assuming that there is no pre-print of the alleged other paper (and even then, the difference in time may be sufficiently short to be regarded as evidence for independent discovery).

   If you cannot publish a pre-print, at least obtain a time stamp of your paper. While it may not help you in the and, at least some ways (in particular publishing a hash of your paper) are almost no effort.

2. I would argue that the only acceptable evidence of the other paper is the paper itself. Now how could the journal have obtained this?

   • The other paper is publicly available (e.g., on a pre-print repository) or its authors have allowed for a free dissemination of the pre-print. In this case, you should be given the information needed to access the paper.

   • The reviewer had the paper under some restrictions and shared it with the journal. This very likely means that the reviewer violated these restrictions (peer-review confidentiality or trust by the authors). I can contrive some exceptions like the authors sharing the paper with the reviewer and allow them to share it if they happen to peer-review a similar paper – but that’s, well, contrived.

   • The other paper’s authors explicitly gave it to the journal that rejected your paper (or agreed that it is given to them). This poses the question: How did the authors of the other paper know about this, or how did the journal know whom to ask? Keeping in mind that the reviewer cannot ask the authors back without breaching peer-review confidentiality, this leads us to slightly modified variants of the previous points: If the reviewer can freely share the identity of the other paper’s author, they can also share it with you. If the reviewer cannot freely share the identity, they almost likely breached some kind of trust.

   • The reviewer was able to share it due to being an author of the paper. This is a clear conflict of interest.

   • The journal doesn’t have the paper and just relies on the reviewer’s word.

   Either way, this would be very fishy and I see good reasons for appealing to the journal’s decision (or making a scandal out of it).

3. The existence of another paper going in a similar direction does not mean that you plagiarised it, but it does evidence that the topic is indeed relevant. Moreover, if the other paper has not been accepted yet, it may very well that the peer review found flaws that your paper doesn’t have. All of this are good arguments for any journal (either the one that rejected your paper or another one) to accept your paper, if the quality of the research is undisputed.

Answer 3

I disagree with some of the interpretations you're being offered.

Given that you've reached a stage of peer review, you are entitled to a rigorous review supported by the current state-of-the-art of your field that is accessible to any expert of the field. This does not include super-secret documents that nobody has privilege to disclose. If the referee in question cannot point you to an accessible abstract or preprint, the document in question should not be part of the referee's review. Simply put, the referee, if he or she cannot ignore the privileged information for the purposes of review, is in conflict, and submitting the review as you received it was not wise (the story is slightly different if the manuscript referred to is floating around the offices as a submission to the journal you submitted to, as the section editor holds the information).

Further, if the secret manuscript in question is from the group or recent coauthor of the referee (assuming it even exists), that referee probably has committed a fairly serious ethical breach by not exposing the conflict when it became apparent.

What to do? There probably isn't a great answer. If the main reason for rejection was the submitted document referred to, my suggestion would be to respond to the reviewing editor with the opinion that you feel you're entitled to a review informed by the available state-of-the-art; the review you received wasn't. Thus, you feel that this referee is in conflict (indeed, this would be a sound and punctate basis for an appeal). Request an additional review, with the review in question tossed. You should consider asking if the secret manuscript in question comes from the referee's group -- in which case the editor should strongly consider not using that referee in the future.

Whether you cc the EiC is up to you. It's a tough call.

Alternatively, simply resubmit to another journal. I would be less inclined to do this, as I think a fair review process is worth defending. If you decide to appeal, I recommend making a point of asking the editor for a timely decision as to whether you will receive a re-review.

A few additional points -- nobody is accusing you of plagiarism. Also, published manuscripts typically contain the dates of the original submission, so provenance of the ideas is not really at issue.

Answer 4

If the other work hasn't been published, it sounds unreasonable to claim plagiarism. The reviewer could have conceivably claimed plagiarism of prior related published work, but didn't.

Since the lack of citation was the only objection, you can try asking for the contact details of the author(s) so you can review and cite their work, with a view to resubmitting your own paper afterwards.

Personal correspondence can be cited and properly attributed, so I don't see a technical issue here so long as you don't reference the identity of the reviewer in your correspondence. Even if the reviewer was the other paper's author, it's the author-role (on the other paper) that you're interacting with, not their role as reviewer of your own paper.

In relation to writing to the editor, I don't see any harm in protesting your innocence regarding plagiarism. However note that as reviews aren't normally published (so in theory, there's no wider circulation of the plagiarism claim) and since it's your word against the reviewer's, there might not be much practically that can be done, beyond a file note that they have received your correspondence.

Answer 5

I would actually suggest to write a letter (or email) to the EiC, cc'ing the associate editor, and state for the record that you have no knowledge of the other manuscript and that your results were (therefore) developed completely independently. While the decision to accept or reject your paper is of course fully up to the editors, it seems to me that two studies who come independently to the same conclusion are both worthy of a publication. The editors could even add (or request you to add) a "note added in proof" stating that they are aware of another paper on the same topic being refereed in a different journal, or whatever else they might want to mention specifically in this context.

Full disclosure, I also published a paper a few years ago whose main results were also found independently by another team around the same time (in that case both papers were submitted to the same journal), and both papers ended up to be published in the same issue.

Good luck!

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Answer 6

This is a horrible thing to happen.

If the other reviewers are favourable then this is a horrible reply to receive because there is nothing that you can do about it. No way to challenge what you cannot see.

I had an instance of one reviewer rejecting an article and throwing up spurious reasons. ... In that case it was necessary to

• politely but firmly point out that the unfavourable reviewer might have a vested interest in preventing publication

• request an alternative reviewer to take their place given that their comments were spurious.

I would be writing back to the AE and saying that given the other 3 reviewers recommend publication and there is nothing in the public domain to prevent publication it should be published.

I would also be talking to your trusted senior colleagues in your department/area of work about this.

So sorry to hear about this, very frustrating.....

BUT it is an acknowledgement that your work is good and worthy of publication that the only thing a reviewer can think of to prevent publication is that someone else is already working on it.

Answer 7

I feel the reviewer is referring to the preprint of the manuscript that I guess you have missed out. Write the editor to send you a copy of that manuscript which he believes is very similar to yours. Go through that manuscript and find out how it is different from yours(I hope there should be some different results if you have obtained the results independently). Try to convenience the reviewer how your results are different then the other one.

I am afraid if the reviewer is not convinced and don't accept the manuscript, you need to rework on your manuscript and send it to the other journal.

Answer 8

I was in a similar situation, but on the other side. My results have been submitted but not published. Someone else took advantage of them in the meantime by obtaining my results, probably through a chain of common colleagues who didn't take "please treat confidentially" that strictly.

I want to emphasize that my results were independently developed and I have no knowledge whatsoever of the other manuscript which according to the reports that were attached has not been published yet.

There is little chance to check this in a transparent way. In my case, the submitter acted exactly the same way as you did, claiming innocence. The sucker got his/her material published, while, in fact, he/she stole my work. You can imagine how offended I was!

Answer 9

I understand your disagreement with the AE's decision, and I also understand why you feel the reviewer's role in this is slightly awkward. You could point this out to the AE or to the editor-in-chief - this may improve their reviewing process in the future. However, I'd be very surprised if the journal reverses its decision or write you anything else than a message that essentially says "we stand behind our decision." So if you do this, you should also send your paper to another journal.

If your priority is to get your paper published as quickly as possible, I don't think there's anything to be gained by emphasising your disagreement or going to the editor-in-chief. Since you already have favourable reviews at this journal, steering towards a coordinated publication (inspired by Wrzlprmft's answer) seems the quickest option.

This would be a three-step process:

1. Start by asking the AE whether they'd be interested in a coordinated publication of the two papers, given that three out of four reviewers were impressed with your paper. At the same time you can stress the originality of your work, and touch on the improvements you've made after reading the reviews.
2. If the AE is interested, you go ahead and figure out who wrote the other paper - your supervisor can ask around.
3. Finally, ask the authors of the other paper whether they'd be interested in coordinated publication.

In case the AE or the other paper's authors are hesitant about this, or if you do not get an answer in a reasonable timeframe, I'd submit to another journal.

Answer 10

I agree with the previous answers stating that you aren't being accused of plagiarism. Rather, if the journal is so selective, they may not want to touch something that is going to appear somewhere already. Do consider the possibility that the reviewer may have shared details of this other paper with the editor- reviews typically contain a section that goes only to the editor. This may explain why the reviewer's decision was accepted.

Also, I know you have a strong feeling about bias (I would too), but there is a chance that this reviewer simply reviewed the other paper. If this is the case, raising questions about the integrity of review (even indirectly) could lead to unfavourable perceptions.

I would strongly suggest publishing in the next highest rated journal at the earliest- you clearly have a good set of results, don't hold them back. Once both papers are out, let the community decide which one is better. It is not unheard of that a paper in a slightly lower rated journal gets more reads/citations that one in a higher rated journal. If indeed the reviewer is an author of the other paper, it means you and they are going neck-to-neck, and you might find the situation reversed soon!