Submission to multiple journals: a method of reducing time to publication?
BMJ 2005; 330 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.330.7486.305 (Published 03 February 2005) Cite this as: BMJ 2005;330:305All rapid responses
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Torgenson et al raise an important problem for authors who have to
wait long periods of time before they learn whether their papers are
accepted or rejected, and then have to submit to further journals if their
papers are rejected. Their proposal of submission to multiple journals
focuses only on the problem of time lost due to rejection.Whathappens if
authors submit their paper as proposed and two or even more journals all
accept it? Which acceptance takes precedence? This apparently wonderful
outcome for the author would not, in my view, lead to healthy competition,
but rather a great deal of difficulty. Would the first journal to accept
the paper get precedence, or would it be up to the author to decide which
journal he/she preferred to publish it? Either way, editors who lost out,
having put the time and effort into peer review, would be rightly
aggrieved. Furthermore, this implies a lot of wastage of peer reviewers'
time, and good reviewers do not grow on trees. We need further thought on
this problem.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
I strongly agree with Dr. Togerson. The process of peer review is
highly inefficient and sometimes anti-scientific. Some journals are very
efficacious and provide responses quickly but it is not the routine.
I would highlight that the problem is not only about the lengthiness of
time, but also about the quality of peer reviews. I mean, the comments and
critics about our papers are sometimes unrealistic and I guess in these
cases, that the peer reviewer did not really read the article. I have had the same
experience described here with the slow process of submission.
There are situations in which I have felt totally disrespected. Once I submitted
my paper to a psychiatry journal (that impact factor was less than 1.0!)
and they took more than 8 months to read my work. When I wrote to the
editor to know the status of my paper, he said that he did not have a
second peer reviewer to read my article, and the next month he rejected my
paper with only one evaluation! Then, I submitted the same article to
another journal with impact factor of 5.0 and they answered me within 3
months and accepted it!
So, my suggesttion is to create an international committee of peer
reviewers (they will analyze for more than one journal) and a group of
editors to analyse one paper and then, if the publication is adequate, this
committee will judge in which journal it will be published. Only two
reviewers will read the paper and they will suggest the journals that are
compatible. If there is more than one possibility and the editors are
equally interested in the paper, the author will make the choice.
In other words, the author will submit the article to a "pool of
journals" and if it is adequate to the pre-requisites of one or more
journals it will be suggested to authors to choose the journal they want
to publish in.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Torgerson et al [1] highlight a widespread frustration. However their
suggestions have potential to overload the system as I suspect the cartoon
within their paper could easily beome submission reality. It is natural
for the researcher to wish to reach a wide audience with his/her work and
to offer a paper to a general journal first, a broad specialist journal
second and a narrower subspecialist journal third.
Simultaneous submission
of the same paper to multiple journals, without other changes in the
system, is only going to greatly increase the demands for reviewer time
and introduce the ineffiency of having many more expert reviewers
examining the same paper at the same time. If reviewers do consider a
paper to be very important they will not know whether the journal will get
the chance to act on their advice. This is not likely to encourage them to
give high priority to the task of review. Within a publishing group such
as the BMJ there is a very simple way of partly addressing this issue. I
suggest that the BMJ publishing group consider all submissions as offered
to the group as a whole. Papers could then be submitted to the appropriate
specialist journal for review. If the editors and reviewers consider the
paper to be valuable it could offered within the publishing group to
either a more general or more subspecialist journal as appropriate without
needing to repeat the review process. This model is already used by some
academic meetings to decide which papers are presented to a plenary
session and which are presented to one of a number of parallel
subspecialist groups. I'm sure this process could ensure that research was
published in an appropriate forum whilst saving the time of authors,
editors and reviewers.
Reference
1. Torgerson DJ, Adamson J, Cockayne S, Dumville J, Petherick E.
Submission to multiple journals: a method of reducing time to publication?
BMJ 2005; 330: 305-307
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
One option open to authors to minimise delay in publication is
through preliminary enquiry with the editor or editorial office
(preferably by e-mail) to ascertain if a manuscript may be of interest to
a journal before submission. This is particularly valuable when authors
find that the subject of their article is rarely published although it
falls within the published scope of the target journal. For instance, one
would rarely find articles on neonatal screening for deafness in
developing countries in journals that focus on international epidemiology
or tropical medicine and on such occasion a preliminary enquiry may just
be advisable. Although authors may be convinced that their work reflect an
important subject-matter, editors still exercise the right to make a value
judgement of what they consider to be of interest to their readers or
subscribers for varied reasons.
Submission of an abstract for preliminary consideration by the editor
may be sufficient although some journals would consider the full
manuscript of a short report for this purpose. Leading journals often
screen papers based exclusively on the abstracts [1,2]. Authors therefore
need to ensure that the abstract is precise, concise and yet comprehensive
enough to reflect the content of the manuscript. A decision should ideally
be available within a week either requesting the authors to submit the
full manuscript formally for review or giving reasons why the article may
not be of interest to the journal. And of course, the authors would
recognise that an expression of interest prior to peer-review and final
editorial decision is merely indicative and not a commitment to accept the
manuscript.
Authors prefer a rapid rejection if their article will not be
published and should be sufficiently guided to appreciate the editors
preference or priorities. Electronic communication between both parties is
essential to make this process worthwhile.
References
1. Groves T, Abbasi K. Screening research papers by reading
abstracts. BMJ 2004;329:470-471
2. Schroter S, Barratt H. Editorial decision making based on
abstracts. European Science Editing 2004;30:8-9.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
All journals must allow the authors for simultaneous submission in
other journals. This will help the authors to get their research work
published rapidly and for the new researchers to get the latest in their
field faster. Submission to multiple journals also increases the speed of
responses by the referees and the editors to the authors. The journal
which publishes the papers faster will get the quality articles. After
all, what is wrong in submission to multiple journals? Actually, the paper
should go through the review and editorial process first and only then the
agreement has to be signed by the authors. Most of the journals require
the signatures of the authors while submitting the article and they keep
the articles with them for months. If the authors are asked to sign the
agreement forms only when the article gets acceptance, as done by some
journals, it would help both the authors and readers. This will improve
the journals also.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Torgerson et al. make a compelling case for the benefits of allowing
for the simultaneous submission of manuscripts to multiple journals. The
logical extension seems to be a single submission to a clearinghouse that
can be accessed by all journals. This would then allow journals to bid on
a manuscript, not with money, but rather with both expedience of
publication and “closeness” of the submitted form to the published form.
An author could then decide to make more changes and wait longer for
submission in a more prestigious journal or to publish sooner, with
minimal changes, in a less prestigious journal. If an open review system
were used, as it is for BioMed Central journals, then it would be a simple
matter for journals to share reviews, thereby avoiding the duplication of
effort that might occur otherwise.
The sharing of review would provide more than just efficiency,
however. It would also alert the editors of all journals involved of any
weaknesses in the manuscript so as to prevent the type of misleading
situation that was recently described [1]. Specifically, a nonrandomized
trial was labeled as randomized when submitted to one journal, and was
rejected by that journal, with the comments to the authors including the
issue that this was not in fact a randomized trial. This manuscript was
then submitted to, and ultimately published by, a different journal. In
published form, the manuscript still claimed that the trial was
randomized, except the details in the text that would allow the reader to
discern that the trial actually was not randomized were now removed. The
reviewers from the first journal were bound by confidentiality not to
reveal this duplicity. Multiple simultaneous submissions with shared
reviews would have prevented this injustice.
One other problem with the current system is that authors may need to
format the manuscript multiple times to match the styles of each journal
to which the manuscript is submitted [2]. Most notable among that which
needs to be formatted would be the references, but also some journals
allow for numbering of subsections and others do not. The research
process could be made much more efficient if any changes specific to a
given journal (but not to the overall quality of the manuscript) were to
be made only once the manuscript were at least tentatively accepted. This
step could certainly be introduced without multiple simultaneous
submissions, but the two do seem to be naturally linked.
References
[1]. Berger VW, and Ioannidis, JPA, The Decameron of Poor Research,
BMJ 2004;329:1436-1440.
[2]. Rogers LF, Follow the Yellow Brick Road: Preparing a Manuscript
for Submission to a Scientific Journal, American Journal of Roentgenology
2002;179(5):1099-1100.
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Delays in publication, whatever the cause, distort science, depress
readers and of course should be reduced wherever possible. But it is
unfair to put all the blame on to editors. One of the great problems I
constantly hear about during workshops is of senior co-authors insisting
(often after a paper has been written for one journal) that they should
submit to a journal with a higher impact factor ‘just in case’.
So one obvious way of speeding up the process would be for authors to
be far more rigorous about where they submit. Choosing a journal on the
basis of objective information about what the journal does and does not
seek to publish – and not on the basis of a vague wish to amass as many
impact factor points as possible – would free up delays significantly. It
would also produce huge savings of time that could be spent on something
more productive than rewriting an article that has been sent to the
‘wrong’ journal.
Competing interests:
Tim Albert's livelihood depends on his being able to train authors to write efficiently
Competing interests: No competing interests
None of the responses so far has mentioned readers. All have assumed
the prime purpose of journals is to act as the final link in the research
chain. As an ex-editor of a peer reviewed general clinical journal, I saw
things differently: what I wanted to publish were useful messages, often
wrapped up in scientific papers, for my readers to take home. This simple
desire was frustrated by many things - the most blatant being its
distortion by the system of impact factors and the dependence on them (at
least in the UK)of the research assessment exercise. Thus, papers which
would help my readers look after their patients better were frequently
sent instead to journals with far fewer appropriately-targeted readers
simply because the impact factor was higher.
Researchers were, no doubt, satisfied with this but it performed a
disservice to readers and to patients.
Multiple submission would serve only to make this worse, as authors
hurled themselves at a waterfall of journals with ever decreasing impact
factors, regardless of their readership.
It might, of course, pressure those journals which take far too long
to process papers to perform more efficiently but the opposite side of
this coin is that no editor takes as kindly to a paper when he knows he is
the 6th on the list as when he is 1st or 2nd.
One solution to authors' grievances is for journals to make as great
a use as possible of instant rejection - easy with electronic submission.
One rapid responder has presumably experienced this system and is
distressed by being told a paper 'does not achieve priority.' But if a
journal has room for only 10% of submmissions and 40% are publishable,
what other way is there? Reviewers mostly work without reward so it would
be unfair to use them solely to help an author rewrite his paper for
another journal. Peer reviewers are there to help editors reach decisions.
Editors and journals are not there to provide a rewriting service for
authors.
Perhaps the best international database, if we are to have one, would
be that which tells us the median times for each journal to conduct each
part of the submissions and publication process. Those authors who rate
speed above appropriate readership would then know where to aim first.
Competing interests:
I provide editorial services for the BMJ Publishing Group and am vice-chair of the Committee On Publication Ethics - but these views are my own, not those of either organisation.
Competing interests: No competing interests
Perhaps authors could continue to submit to one journal at a time but
tell the reviewing journal that, if it hasn't made a decision or provided
reviewers' comments within a certain time (say, 4-6 weeks), the authors
will withdraw the article and submit it elsewhere. It seems to me that
authors are too passive, waiting months for a response (perhaps
occasionally phoning the journal office to find out what's happening). If
it's important to get an article published quickly, then take control away
from tardy journals!
Competing interests:
None declared
Competing interests: No competing interests
Re: Submission to multiple journals: a method of reducing time to publication?
I respond as a Journal Editor. I do happen to think that simultaneous submission is unethical - but that is my view.
If a journal is taking time with reviewing manuscripts it is primarily for two reasons (notwithstanding illness). The first is incompetence of the editor. The second reason is the review process. Good reviewers are worth their weight in gold and unless anyone can provide me with ecxamples otherwise, they do it for either prestige, kudos or out of recogntion that the system would fall apart without them. I can't speak for Medical journals but in my field, most journal editors are either paid very little or do the job for other rewards. Joint submissions are generally identified - either by reviewers or editors. Many of us play both roles for several journals, particularly those of us who are specialists. Joint submission is, in my opinion, not fair on those people who give up their time for little reward. If response rates are not good then it is up to the research community in a given discipline to deal with it.
Ged
Competing interests: No competing interests