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Can I publish a paper about a contribution X that was already (very briefly) outlined in the Supplemental Information of a previous paper of mine ?

Background: X is significant and deserves a paper on its own but could not be completely published in the first paper due to space constraints.

Field: STEM/CS.

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  • Answers already given are good, so it shouldn't be a big problem, but maybe in the future keep in mind that how you feel about this now is a good reason for not mentioning research ideas all too generously in your papers/supplements. As a reviewer I tend to say if such an idea is bad it doesn't deserve to be mentioned, and if it's good, it deserves its own paper with elaboration and should probably not be mentioned in an earlier paper either, beyond maybe a one-liner (length and being nice to readers are an issue here).
    – Christian Hennig
    Commented Dec 5 at 11:50
  • To note that blind review may require you to write as if the previous paper was written by somebody else. So you may need to either cite it and explain how your work is different, or if you can't do that not cite it because it would give away your anonymity. You could say "We build on work we outlined in [42] ... [42] Citation redacted for blind review" or some other formulation. In that case the reviewers then aren't able to see the earlier paper.
    – user1908704
    Commented Dec 5 at 15:27

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In general, yes, absolutely. People expand on previous research all the time - whether their own or someone else's.

Of course, you will need to cite and refer to your earlier publication.

The question then turns into whether your new contribution offer a sufficient advance over previous work to be publishable. That will depend on the specifics of your case. The reviewers will give you feedback on that. If you'd rather not write a full paper to have it rejected, ask someone in your field their opinion, with the specifics: your earlier paper and an outline of what you propose to do now.

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You can definitely submit - it will be up to program committees / editors to decide whether your new paper is worthwhile for publication.

I would suppose you should endeavor to "adorn" your contribution with consequences, applications, context, potential future work on the basis of it etc. - which is stuff that was not included the brief outline and may make the difference between mere elaboration and a beefier contribution.

Also:

  • Refer explicitly and clearly to the brief-outline publication, but don't "shoot yourself in the foot" by deprecating the significance of what you're writing.
  • Perhaps a venue with a slightly different scope, which would better fit the result you had outlined in the previous publication, would be appropriate.
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