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I was wondering whether one's submission history to a particular journal plays an important role / is considered by a handling editor? Let's assume that one submits to a particular journal multiple times and gets rejected in the majority of cases. Will this adversely affect the handling of your most recent submission, e.g., does the editor think "oh no, not again this guy"? Do handling editors have access to an authors previous (rejected) submissions?

EDIT: Previously I did not find this related post: Strategy for submission of articles to highly ranked journals I am sorry for opening and the inconvenience.

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    Journals have a finite number of editors. If you've submitted many times before, probably many of them will have been handled by the same editor, who may simply remember your history without any need to "check" or "access" it.
    – Nate Eldredge
    Jun 25 at 0:32
  • "in the majority of cases" is very ambiguous. Some top journals have a rejection rate of 90% and if you managed to publish 20% of your stuff there, you're above average... I don't think it will play out against you if you submitted papers of good if sometimes too low standard and got rejected a few times but also accepted at some point.
    – Christian Hennig
    Jun 26 at 20:32
  • No. ............ :)
    – paul garrett
    Jun 27 at 1:25

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As an editor of Elsevier and IEEE, I see no option to check an author's submission history. All I see are the author's publications.

Having a high quality publication record helps, but each paper is judged on its own merit.

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I assume that editors normally have better things to do than researching the submission history of an author of a new submission, even though they probably could. But a submission should be treated on its own merits and the submission history shouldn't play a role, so I don't see why an editor would invest effort into looking at this.

The editor of course may remember you. They shouldn't be biased by this, but there is unconscious bias so it cannot be ruled out. However I'd believe this will only be the case if you submitted extraordinarily bad or extraordinarily many papers that got rejected. If we're talking top journals, many people hope to get published there because of the career boost, and this means it's fairly normal that some people submit a lot there even if often rejected.

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  • +1 ... they shouldn't be biased ... and ... submission should be treated on its own merits
    – semmyk-research
    Jun 27 at 7:27

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