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The main idea of this questions is to have two papers under review simultaneously which are somewhat related but do not rely on each other in any way (except in the temporal sequence of discovery for myself). Should the second submission cite the first?

Question 1: Suppose one has a paper under review and are writing a new paper which extends the methods to a different class of objects. Should the paper under review be listed as a reference?

My thought is that if it was someone else's unpublished paper that inspired me to extend the methods, I would definitely cite it, and that tells me I should cite it even though it's my own paper. But it also feels a bit weird too as the papers don't rely on each other in any way really. They are just two different applications of the same proof technique. The applications are somewhat similar though.

Question 2: If I cite it, would I need to include the unpublished manuscript as a supplemental file during submission of the new paper to a journal?

My thought is to not include it, as the work is mostly not relevant, plus it is a much longer and more complicated paper. SO it would make the submission seem very cumbersome. The current paper is much shorter and doesn't rely on the other in any way. Reading the other paper will not help evaluate the current paper. The only thought I have is that an editor/referee might argue that in light of the unpublished work, the new paper isn't a sufficiently interesting new application of the novel proof technique (which was novel in the unpublished paper but now isn't so novel). And that would be a fair point, but I'm not sure if it would be the deciding factor at this particular journal. And I wouldn't want to not include the citation for the sole purpose of avoiding this possibility.

My thought is that both papers are highly relevant, because the results are non-trivial and will almost certainly have other applications that I can't foresee.

These are a math papers, but I imagine the question could be answered more generally.

Edit/note: I believe I am looking for ethical guidance here. I wanted to make sure I was following expected practice of the discipline and what most journals/editors would have wanted in this matter. I.e. if excluding the citation is likely to be seen as unethical, then I definitely want to include it. If it doesn't really matter and opinions are too varied, then I might just exclude it.

I went ahead and submitted the paper excluding the reference though. I'll try to update this if ultimately the reference does end up in the paper though. Hopefully, I get a chance to ask the editors/referees what they desire on this matter.

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  • you might wait and add the citation of the first paper to the second in the last stage of the review process of the second paper. It is possible that the first get accepted and receive doi during the review process of the second one. You can also think of arXive. but check if pre-publishing in arXive is acceptable by your goal journals (and if they have any condition for it).
    – m123
    Commented Apr 19 at 14:48

1 Answer 1

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Pure mathematician here.

Question 1: Suppose one has a paper under review and are writing a new paper which extends the methods to a different class of objects. Should the paper under review be listed as a reference?

Sure, that's not a problem. Our culture in math is to cite papers that we rely on but also papers that are thematically related, that the reader might want to check out to learn more. You write "if it was someone else's unpublished paper that inspired me to extend the methods, I would definitely cite it" - so then you should definitely cite it, even though you wrote it, because it might interest the reader! In fact, you might consider updating paper 1 to also cite paper 2, as another instance where this proof technique was extended in a similar way.

Now let's turn to the issue that paper 1 is unpublished (so far). In math, this situation is very common, because the speed with which papers are published is much less than the speed we produce preprints. It is common to wait a year for a first referee report, maybe another six months until a paper is formally accepted, and more months till it is published.

The best way to combat this issue is to put your papers on arXiv when you've finished writing them and before you submit them. You can then update the arXiv submission after incorporating the comments from the referees. This allows other researchers to build on your results even while they are under review at a journal.

Question 2: If I cite it, would I need to include the unpublished manuscript as a supplemental file during submission of the new paper to a journal?

You can cite the arXiv version and therefore will not need to include a supplemental file. Also, since the work in paper 2 does not depend on paper 1 for correctness, probably the referee won't need to check over paper 1 at all. Almost every paper I've written cites some other preprint of mine that is still under review. Perhaps your paper 1 will be accepted by the time paper 2 is accepted, in which case you can update the citation to point to the published version. Good luck!

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  • For now, I'm not putting the papers on arxiv since I want to get several other related results written up first. I do plan to put preprints on arxiv eventually though. I decided to leave the citation out for now, but maybe will talk to editors about that if the opportunity arises, depending on how the submission process plays out. Thank you so much for the answer!
    – jdods
    Commented Apr 21 at 18:48
  • I suppose I was looking for ethical guidance here. I could quite put that to words until now. I wanted to make sure I follow the guidelines that the journal would want. I've added a note to the question to clarify that.
    – jdods
    Commented Apr 21 at 18:50

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