The journals and periodicals consider a multiple-journal submitting as a no-go clearly in their instructions for the contributing authors. If you submit your paper to be published in one journal, you cannot submit the same manuscript to another publication. This is the usual rule protecting both the author and the publisher from duplicating the effort. Therefore, you should try to select the journal according to your preferences to make sure you will get your manuscript published in no time.
It might be possible to publish the same or similar research manuscript in multiple journals if the journal doesn’t check if it was published somewhere else, but remember it is not ethical to do so. If your paper is discovered to be submitted in various journals, the editors will simply reject it; and if it was published already, the editor would most probably withdraw the paper.
Can you republish already published content?
The cases of re-publication won’t be a violation of ethics standards if it has been translated into another language. Also, republishing of paper is considered to be legal if you are working on a special issue dedicated to a topic or talking about an author and his/her work. However, the republishing of a paper should be fully disclosed within the issue and, of course, within copyright rights.
So what do you do if you submit the paper to more publishers already?
If you, unknowingly, already did the unethical simultaneous submission and submitted your article to more than one journal, write an email or a letter clearly retracting your submission to all but one. The sooner the better. A good piece of advice for the next time here would be: don’t send papers to a journal where you really do not want to publish; choose the one that fits you the best (and move down the line if not accepted).
In the end, there’s not only one side to blame – both sides of the publishing chain (the author as well as the journal) need to be considerate to the other. Not only do you need to conform to the guidelines – publishers should, of course, also be empathetic and not prolong the publication process to hold the author from publishing it elsewhere, if necessary.
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Resources:
For Publication Ethics support, check the COPE Guidelines.
If you wanna know more about this topic, we invite to read: https://publicationethics.org/case/simultaneous-submission-without-aiming-duplicate-publication
Discover more on our blog: How can I publish a research paper in the journal for free
