Celia Green receives a paper from a general journal for review. Two
days later she receives essentially the same paper from a specialty
journal for review. The problem, data and analyses were the same,
though the paper had been rewritten to focus more on specialty issues.
Professor Green informs both editors.
Questions
1. What should the editors do?
2. What kinds of factors might the editors ponder in
deliberating this case?
Reflect on the above questions and form your
own answers before clicking the Discussion
key to review the commentary provided with this case.
Discussion
This case of dual submission is in part similar to the earlier case of
dual submission in which the author develops a method from a general
paper into a methodological submission. It differs from that case in
that methods are generalizable to a variety of subjects. To stand on
its own as an independent submission, the specialty paper needs to
address a different problem and/or use different data. Grounding it a
bit more heavily in specialty literature is not sufficient. The editors
may either reject both on the grounds of dual submission, or if they
feel the author truly believed the two papers were distinctive, give
the author permission to withdraw one and leave the other under review.