How to submit a manuscript in two parts?

Question

I have a new manuscript to be published in an Elsevier engineering journal that has a maximum limit of 8000 words. I can't fit the content in this space. Fortunately, the manuscript can be easily split into two manuscripts, say A and B. The first will be concerned with assessing the potential of, say, wind energy in country X and the measurements carried out, while the second manuscript B will be focused on simulating wind energy systems. The first manuscript will be independent, but I'll have to refer to it in the second one (although, the second article will be understandable without reading the first manuscript). So, I have the following questions:

1. Should I split the manuscript, or submit it to another journal with flexible space limitations?
2. Is it a good idea to do that, based on your experience? (I have read a lot about this, but I want to know what the editors prefer and how they handle this situation)
3. Most importantly, how do I submit the two manuscripts (to the same journal): at the same time or consecutively?

Answer 1

The answer to this is "it depends." Some journals do not approve of "series" of papers, expecting that each submission stands on its own. Others will publish extended series of articles (one such series had at least ten entries). So the question of what to do depends on how appropriate the journal in which you want to publish is for the content you're writing about.

If the journal you're publishing in allows it, then there's no problem submitting two manuscripts at the same time, and that's probably the best way to do it, because the related nature of the two manuscripts is much easier to assess. Waiting to send in the second one doesn't help.

As far as the appropriateness is concerned, my first four papers were published as two pairs of manuscripts, so there's nothing wrong with doing so to keep the length of the individual manuscripts reasonable.