How is it in my best interest not to submit a paper to two journals simultaneously?

Question

The two journals I am considering for my paper each demand that the paper be submitted exclusively to their journal for consideration.

What do I win if I don’t keep this rule?

• If I get rejected by both, I will have found out earlier that the paper is not worthy of publication.
• If I get accepted by one of the journals, this is very good. I will have found out faster which of the two journals is willing to publish me.
• If I get accepted by both, this is really a dream. I should probably find a reason (excuse) to withdraw the publication from one of them.

In any case how can submitting to two journals negatively impact my reputation more than the gain by being actually accepted? (More so considering I will probably leave academia after my PhD dissertation.)

What can I lose if I don’t adhere to this rule? What sanctions, if any, can I expect?

Answer 1

1. It is quite likely that there is an overlap in who gets asked to referee the two submissions, which would lead to the double submission being detected.

2. Double submission of papers is sufficient ground for retraction - even after the paper has been accepted for publication. As some journals publish submission dates with published papers, it is conceivable that your double submission is uncovered after publication - and that you end up with a retraction, ie no published paper.

3. Academic misconduct (and double submission is such) typically is sufficient for dismissal from a PhD program.

Answer 2

Simultaneous submission to more than one journal can be lethal to your reputation.

For an example, see this article from COPE (Committee On Publication Ethics). In that case, the author(s) were effectively blacklisted by all the journals to which they had submitted simultaneously, and the information was made public. Even if you are planning to leave academia, you do not want a reputation of being willing to break the ethical norms in your field. And it is taken seriously.

Editors take this so seriously that they may ban authors from submitting to their journal if they have broken the rules.

As @Arno noted, double submission may be sufficient to get you dismissed from your PhD program--this is serious academic misconduct. Also, if the double submission is discovered after acceptance, you may well see your paper being retracted. You might thus end up with neither a publication or a doctorate!

Other answers have touched on the reasons why you should not submit to more then one journal at once, including the non-trivial consideration of wasting reviewers' time with a submission that you will retract if another journal accepts first. In addition, simultaneous submission to multiple journals will increase the cost of publishing journals, thus increasing the subscription cost for every one of us.

There are multiple reasons to submit to only one journal at a time, from respect for others' time and effort to consideration of your reputation and future in the field. As mentioned, the stigma of being perceived to have attempted to cheat the system is so severe that it may well follow you even outside academia. Just don't do it!

Answer 3

Just as a note which won't fit in a comment, the use of single submission is wide-spread in the western academy outside of law. Legal academics in the US, on the other hand, are expected to pursue a multiple-submission strategy where they shop their articles to many journals at the same time. There is all sorts of gamesmanship and politicking when it comes to finding one to publish it, which I see as a negative for their publishing environment. Some of their issues are probably also due to the fact that the vast majority of law journals are the so-called "law reviews" which are run and edited by second and third-year law students with little to no faculty input. There is no peer review or blind (single nor double) review.

The standard accusation about this model is that articles are accepted based on author prestige not quality or correctness since third year law students are not experts and cannot evaluate quality. Furthermore, it is often asserted that authors choose their venue based on the highest prestige law review that makes them an offer. As such, there is some brinksmanship around who offers when and how long authors have to accept. As a result of all this, many submitted articles by prestigious professors are not ready for publication and require substantial work with the student editors.

If you'd like to know what it's like to publish in such an environment, there's lots of blogging and literature on the state of legal academic publishing. I think you'd find that since peer review is volunteer and that acceptance happens after all the reviews are conducted, reviewers would dry up. I certainly wouldn't volunteer in an environment where I knew that the article could get yanked out of the journal I reviewed for because it got accepted by a more prestigious one. Single-submission helps prevent the volunteer peer-reviewing model from falling apart.

Answer 4

To submit the same material to two journals simultaneously is against the ethics of publishing. When you submit to many journals, you will be specifically asked to verify that your work is not under consideration in another journal. This has to do with copyright. Your paper will be published somewhere and under a specific copyright. If the same paper then appears somewhere else, it will likely be subject to a different copyright. Journals and publisher's therefore look very seriously at such attempts. You may be rejected by both in the end and as was stated in other answers, your reputation will be ruined very quickly.

Answer 5

Aside from the ethical problems, I would think that trying to prepare the paper for two publishers simultaneously would be counterproductive, and that the quality of the paper would suffer.

Each journal has different requirements for article length, organization, style, abbreviations, and so forth. Journal requirements may overlap, but a paper prepared for one journal generally requires at least some revision before it's ready to submit to a different journal.

Journals are more likely to publish papers that match the background and interests of their audience. Considering what the audience understands and what bits of knowledge need to be explained rather than assumed is best done for one audience at a time.

Most journals I've worked with require the authors to state (as part of the submission process or in a cover letter) that no part of the article has been published, and that the paper is not under consideration elsewhere.

Answer 6

Being honorable means striving to meet all the things that are expected of you. It would be dishonorable to game the system as you appear to be contemplating doing.

Be honorable. It's that simple.

Answer 7

One thing not mentioned yet is that publisher policies typically have a line forbidding multiple submission. For example, Springer's publishing ethics page requires that "The manuscript has not been submitted to more than one journal for simultaneous consideration", whie Wiley's research integrity page says "The Copyright Transfer Agreement, Exclusive License Agreement or the Open Access Agreement, one of which must be submitted before publication in any Wiley journal, requires signature from the corresponding author to warrant that the article [...] is not being considered for publication elsewhere in its final form."

If you dual submit, you are violating the publisher's policies. If you are detected, there's a chance you'll be blacklisted by the publisher (not just the journal), which will close all the publisher's journals to you.

Answer 8

It certainly is in your best interest, otherwise there would be no need to prevent you from doing so. As far as I can tell, it seems like an edict against simultaneous publication somehow turned into an axiom that simultaneous submission is deeply unethical. It is not. (If others have more insight into this history, I'd love to know more!) It is not unethical for you to have your work under consideration at more than one journal, and it's certainly not "a crime." Arguments to the contrary tend to hinge on one of two things:

1. That it raises the cost of the journal. I do not work work in a field that pays its reviewers. If you do, perhaps this argument has more merit. In most disciplines, however, review is volunteer work. It does not raise the cost of the journal.

2. If it doesn't raise the cost of the journal, then the argument is that you are wasting people's time. You are not. If I receive an article I have seen before, I can submit the same review and be done with peer review for the day. Copy-paste is there, and it does not waste my time.

My personal belief is that it is unethical to prevent simultaneous submission. People are precariously employed. Others are on a 5-year tenure clock. It is deeply wrong to waste their time sitting on an article for months before telling them you are not interested. Sure. If your reviewers suggested minor revisions and you really want to publish the piece, you can ask the author to withdraw it from consideration elsewhere. But, at the very least, the initial outset should allow simultaneous submission.

I am not surprised that law reviews tend to operate this way. Those journals are obviously interested in ethics and legal considerations (it's one of their fields!), and their conclusion is that simultaneous submissions should be allowed. I agree. Unfortunately, you will risk offending people and possibly being "blacklisted." Then again, I have to wonder if this is an urban myth. I have heard about people being punished for simultaneous submissions, but I have never actually seen it happen...