can a research paper be published in more than one journal

Simultaneous Submission of a Manuscript to More Than One Journal: Challenges and Solutions

• Published: 03 March 2017
• Volume 33 , pages 188–191, ( 2017 )

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• Masoud Negahdary 1 , 2 , 3  

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In this study, the challenges and solutions related to the simultaneous submission of a manuscript to more than one journal were investigated. Always, the found challenges exist and occur consciously or unconsciously. Unfortunately, an applicable solution has not been offered in this regard so far. I have introduced a new way, for the first time, that provides all publishers with a controllable submission process. The provided solution is an application programming interface that is linked to a central database and could save critical information of all submitted manuscripts such as title, authors’ information, abstract, keywords, date of first submission and history of referee’s comments. All publishers throughout the world can join this database, enable its advanced features for their journals and try to providing a controllable submission system against this important publishing challenge.

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Manuscript Submission

Preparing Manuscript from Thesis Material and Selecting Journals for Submission

Strategy: a tool for the formulation of peer-review strategies.

J. A. García, Rosa Rodriguez-Sánchez & J. Fdez-Valdivia

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Department of Research and Development, Lexis Publisher, IR, Nikdel Alley, No. 7., Unit 1, Shakouri Garakani Street, Niknam BLVD, Piroozi Street, Tehran, 1763964995, Iran

Masoud Negahdary

Yazd Cardiovascular Research Center, Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences, Yazd, Iran

Nanomedicine and Nanobiology Research Center, Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Shiraz, Iran

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Correspondence to Masoud Negahdary .

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Negahdary, M. Simultaneous Submission of a Manuscript to More Than One Journal: Challenges and Solutions. Pub Res Q 33 , 188–191 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-017-9507-6

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Published : 03 March 2017

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12109-017-9507-6

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All You Need to Know about Simultaneous Submissions

You spend a lot of time conducting research. When it’s time to submit your manuscript, however, you have to play a frustrating game of “submit and wait.” The golden rule of publication ethics is to never submit your draft paper to more than one journal at a time. This can easily translate into weeks or even months of waiting for an editorial team to review your paper. If they reject it, then you might have to rinse and repeat by getting English editing services , including journal manuscript editing and research paper editing , and submitting it to yet another journal. In these situations, it’s natural to wonder why you can’t simply submit the same manuscript to more than one journal and simply withdraw your submission once you receive an affirmative response from one of the editors.

Unfortunately,  simultaneously submitting your manuscript is a gamble you don’t want to take because it can lead to many unintended complications . In this article, we provide a quick overview of the various issues related to multiple submissions including the pitfalls to avoid and when it could be okay to submit what might seem like overlapping submissions.

Reasons for Submitting Sequentially Rather Than Simultaneously

Several factors influence the need to submit manuscripts sequentially rather than simultaneously. Ethical rules, legal issues, practical business matters, and even reputational concerns come into play when we submit articles for publication.

Reputational concerns

Journals are respected because they publish high-quality research that is vetted by peers. Publishers pride themselves on the fact that the materials they distribute are novel and noteworthy for their audience. We trust them, so if we were to discover that journals were publishing results already described elsewhere, we would begin to doubt whether the findings were new discoveries or recycled information. Additionally, coverage of the same research and its findings by multiple journals could inflate the perceived significance of the research project. Readers could develop a false impression that several studies had been conducted on the same topic and that each of them yielded concurring results. We shouldn’t force our readers to independently determine whether the results they read in different journals were produced by the same group or covered the exact same study!

Legal matters

From a legal perspective, at the time you submit a manuscript, you are also likely required to grant exclusive publication rights to the journal, should they accept your paper. While you may retain the copyright in most cases, remember that when you submitted your paper, you have  already  promised the journal that they have sole distribution rights (with a few exceptions that usually don’t involve granting other publishers similar rights). Imagine what would happen if you promised two separate journals exclusive rights and they both accepted your paper. You would have certainly created a conundrum that would be embarrassing for you and would force journals to waste time and energy to resolve the conflict. You would also risk the likely situation in which your paper would subsequently be rejected by both journals, or if the paper was already printed, a public retraction.

Practical business reasons

A practical matter to consider is the fact that you are not the only one concerned about wasting time with a manuscript that may never be published by a particular journal. While it is true that the average review time for high-impact journals is several months, editors, reviewers, and other staff invest considerable time and resources evaluating thousands of manuscripts. While you are concerned with publishing your findings, journals are pressured to release relevant and current research. They cannot afford to waste time on papers that could be withdrawn at the last minute; therefore, common courtesy would dictate that you submit your manuscript sequentially.

Finally, restricting authors to one submission at a time lowers the amount of paperwork that editors must process, which means more time spent on reviewing the documents they receive. If everyone could submit simultaneously, editors would receive more submissions, which would translate to even longer review times.

Consequences of Violating the Single Submission Rule

As mentioned above, one possible result of simultaneously submitting your paper is that all the journals concerned could reject your paper or retract it if they have already published your work.

Another option would be for journals to request that you convert your lengthier work into a short communication that could be revised in a way that would remain useful for the journal’s readership.

Finally, if you were discovered to violate a publisher’s submission rules, you may lose that publisher’s trust. As a result, the journal may more closely examine your subsequent submissions to ensure no other ethical rules had been violated.

Other Problems with Multiple Submissions

Submitting the exact same manuscript simultaneously isn’t the only way you can encounter problems with a journal. Overlapping studies can also raise flags for editors; for example, dividing your research findings across multiple papers (also known as “salami slicing” your paper) is frowned upon. Such a practice doesn’t automatically lead to rejection, however. If each of your manuscripts has some distinguishing features that do not overlap (i.e., each paper presents distinct findings), editors may still accept your paper after you revise it to clarify and highlight its distinctions.

However, we do note that while salami slicing is discouraged, you can submit multiple papers based on a single large trial, provided that each paper uses the shared data to focus on a unique research question that is not explored by the other papers.

When Can You Simultaneously Submit Content ?

Despite the ample reasons we provide to caution you against concurrent submissions, there are a few workarounds available.

Pre-submission queries

You can always contact editors with pre-submission queries so that you can eliminate journals that might not be a good fit. These query letters that briefly summarize your manuscript’s contents can be sent simultaneously, and once you receive a favorable response from a journal, you can decide whether to submit your manuscript to initiate the full review process. In many ways, pre-submission queries save time and resources for both you and editors.

Pre-printing

Pre-printing your data and findings can also be a way for you to receive credit for your work while you wait to find a journal for your paper. In the spirit of open access, pre-printing is a process in which you share your findings in a database accessible to the scientific community. For example, the physical sciences database, arXiv, is one of the earliest created electronic pre-print platforms.

Since pre-prints are not peer-reviewed versions of your paper, you should not consider this option as a substitute for an actual journal publication; however,  one benefit of pre-printing is that you would be credited for your findings as of your pre-print release date, rather than your paper’s subsequent publication date . So, for authors worried about a race against time to receive acknowledgment as the “first” to discover something, pre-prints are a great way to go.

Be advised, however, that  if you plan to submit to a double-blind peer-reviewed journal, you should NOT pre-print that manuscript . The purpose of a double-blind review is to ensure that any bias based on the author’s identity does not influence a reviewer’s evaluation of a manuscript. Pre-printing would defeat that purpose since it is possible that reviewers may have come across your research in pre-print databases. Additionally, it may take longer for journal editors to locate a reviewer who has not previously seen your paper in pre-print format. The longer it takes for editors to find reviewers, the less likely your paper will get published!

Additional Resources

For additional information regarding the ethical issues surrounding multiple submissions, please refer to the following:

• Elsevier Factsheet, “Simultaneous Submission/ Multiple, Duplicate Publication.”
• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), “ Overlapping Publications .”
• Elizabeth Wager, “ Why You Should not Submit Your Work to More than One Journal at a Time .”
• Elsevier’s case studies regarding multiple publications:  Case Study 1 ,  Case Study 2 , and  Case Study 3 .
• Committee on Publication Ethics, “ What to Do If You Suspect Redundant (Duplicate) Publication (A) .”
• Committee on Publication Ethics, “ What to Do If You Suspect Redundant (Duplicate) Publication (B) .”

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Multiple Submissions: What They Are and Why You Must Avoid Them

You’ve done great research. You’ve edited the scientific language to perfection. Now it’s time to find the journal that can give it the highest impact and as soon as possible. Hey, why not try two or three?

Don’t even think about submitting to more than one journal. That’s called multiple submissions, or simultaneous submissions, and it’s against the rules.

Multiple submission is when you try to submit your research paper to more than one publisher to raise your chances of getting published. Scientific publication doesn’t tolerate that, but it may be hard to know why.

It may seem rational to shop your work around to the highest bidder, but in academic research, it’s forbidden and dangerous to your reputation and career.

Let’s clear it up and clarify why submitting the same, or very similar work, to multiple journals is not only an unethical mistake, it’s a potential career-killer.

What is multiple submission?

Other names: redundant submission, duplicate submission, simultaneous submission

Multiple submission is sending your manuscript to more than one journal at a time in the hope that one will publish it. You’re not legally permitted to sign over the copyright of your work to more than one publisher.

Moreover, if it happens, and you get overlapping publications or duplication publications, both may be retracted and you may find you’ve violated the law.

OK, that’s pretty scary. But when a research is working under a high-pressure “ publish or perish ” environment, demanding x number of publications, it may still be tempting. In rare cases, too, researchers simply don’t know the rules.

There are better ways to increase your publication rate .

What’s wrong with shopping your research to find the best offer?

If you were selling a used car, you certainly wouldn’t advertise it to one person, right? So, offering your manuscript to multiple journals in search of the highest impact or fastest publication offer may seem logical.

But would that logic work for a wedding proposal? Unlikely! If two accept, you’re really in a bind. You must declare your love and devotion to one partner.

It’s the same with your target journal . Make sure it’s your soulmate.

Submitting to a journal implies you entrust your work to that one publication. If that publication is interested, it will cement your relationship. Then, after peer review, when the journal accepts your work for publication, you sign over the copyright and it’s no longer your property.

The simple rule is: Never submit your work to more than one journal at a time.

What other experts say on multiple submission

Don’t believe us? Here are a few more views:

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

“Authors should not submit the same manuscript, in the same or different languages, simultaneously to more than one journal. The rationale for this standard is the potential for disagreement when two (or more) journals claim the right to publish a manuscript that has been submitted simultaneously to more than one journal, and the possibility that two or more journals will unknowingly and unnecessarily undertake the work of peer review, edit the same manuscript, and publish the same article.” –ICMJE ( source )

“Articles submitted for publication must be original and must not have been submitted to any other publication. Except in very unusual circumstances (and then only with your agreement as the editor), authors are expected to submit articles that are original and have not been submitted to any other publication.” –Elsevier ( source )

Springer Nature

“It is unethical to submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time. Doing this wastes the time of editors and peer reviewers, and can damage the reputation of the authors and the journals if published in more than one journal as the later publication will have to be retracted.” –Springer Nature ( source )

Expert oversight

Publishers also typically defer to authorities such as the ICMJE and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

What are the harms of duplicate submission/multiple submission?

So we know that it is widely considered unethical to submit a manuscript to multiple journals at the same time. But why is this the case? Many reasons.

You may break the law

If two journals agree at roughly the same time to publish your study, which of them will hold the copyright?

Signing a transfer of copyright can only happen once. Then the manuscript become the publisher’s property (that’s why self-plagiarism occurs: you can’t cite what isn’t rightfully yours). That’s not robbery either. The journal is providing its valuable forum to showcase your literature.

Wasted time and resources

Having your draft manuscript go through redundant peer review is obviously a waste of valuable and limited resource. The scientific community functions and self-regulates on the strength of unpaid peer review.

If the human gatekeepers don’t catch your simultaneous submissions, the electronic ones will

It can be nearly impossible for journals and peer reviewers to know if you’re being straight with them. They take you on your word. They assume you know your ethics.

If you don’t know your ethics or you choose to try and hack the system, anti-plagiarism software solutions such CrossCheck, Turnitin, and iThenticate are getting better in leaps and bounds.

Their algorithms and machine learning are increasingly robust and intuitive. They’ll easily catch multiple publications. Then you’re looking at legal actions along with retractions and future consequences with that black mark on your record.

Redundant/repeat “evidence” and literature distortion

Another reason multiple submission is so devious is that repeated evidence in the literature will bias the overall evidence. This is because a study may be counted more than once in meta-analyses .

Such analyses pool all available data to calculate an overall effect. Even if you’ve done good research and not salami-sliced it, it’s not worth double credit!

Leopold (2013) notes the importance of such analyses in health policy and in making decisions on medicine. Repeatedly published studies may create an artificial inflation of the treatment effect size.

Violates readers’ trust

The same study by Leopold (2013) notes that journal subscribers are paying for originality. If the same study makes it to print twice, then that assumption is violated. Even if the research is open access and there is no price to read it, it still violates the expectations that peer reviewed research is unique to one publication.

So when can you submit your work to more than one journal?

But that doesn’t seem to stop some under-pressure researchers.

You can’t submit your work to more than one journal at the same time . That’s multiple submission. Aside from that basic and binary principle, there are cases that leave authors a bit confused. These usually arise at some stage of submission and peer review, and because of dysfunctional communication among the co-authors.

After rejection of your manuscript, then it’s OK

However, if you submit your manuscript to one journal and it’s rejected, then it’s OK to submit it to another journal.

If you’ve already been through peer review , and especially if you’ve made considerable revisions, you may want to take some time to refine it before you submit it. That way you’re not just working your way down the impact factor ladder. You can use this opportunity to refine your work and raise your chances for a successful submission to another journal.

That is entirely OK and it’s not multiple submission. In fact, it’s good practice.

What if you submit to a journal, but then decide you want to submit to a different one?

If you want to withdraw your submitted manuscript from one journal and submit it to a different journal, you must write to inform the editor of the first journal.

You’ll need written confirmation that your submission has been withdrawn before you go ahead and submit your work to a different journal.

Don’t assume that if you hear nothing, your original submission has been withdrawn. You need to obtain a formal notice from the first journal before you can submit your manuscript elsewhere.

An example of how this may work can be found on Elsevier . In this case, it’s quite strict and not something that can be done on whim. Elsevier’s policy only allows withdrawal at a certain stage or if there are potentially unethical or fraudulent, etc. aspects in a submission.

And be sure all the authors approve

As with submission and revisions, you always have to be sure that all the authors of a manuscript agree. This avoids any conflicts and ethically, it’s required.

If you decide to withdraw your submission, you’ll need the approval from all the co-authors. Rounding up this approval is typically the responsibility of the corresponding author.

What can journals and journal editors do about multiple submission and duplicate publication?

Not all cases are cut-and-dry examples of an identical study being published, or an attempt at publishing the same manuscript.

Look for potentially problematic cases

Some potential cases of redundant publication result from carelessness and poor communication among the authors. Those are not excusable, but it may fall on the gatekeepers (journals and editors) to weed them out.

Some borderline and debatable instances are:

• Publication in different languages
• A study presented from a different angle
• Suspected salami publication (multiple studies using the same data)
• A different co-author submits the same study
• Text recycling and self-plagiarism

In such cases it’s best to defer to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)* guidelines. COPE offers case examples and flowcharts to follow.

Make sure your journal has clear policies

As COPE notes , the journal’s author guidelines should clearly state what the journal’s policy is on duplicate publication. Authors should verify they have not submitted or published elsewhere.

Despite this directive, many journals fail to set out clear guidelines for authors.

In an examination of 219 health-related journals, Ding et al. (2020) found 18% did not have a policy on duplicate and salami publication. Additionally, 33% only referred to generic guidelines. Only 13% of the journal examined in the study had clear policies.

The gatekeepers are not to blame for unethical and devious submission practices. But they may bear some responsibility for not clearly telling authors what’s OK and not OK. Especially when dealing with ESL/EFL authors, vague language or a lack of clear directives can be confusing.

OK I get it, but I’m in a hurry to get published!

Yes, understood. We get it.

Even after reading all this info, you still need to get published, right? You’re under pressure and you may have a deadline or quota bearing down on you.

Simply hearing “it’s bad, don’t do it” doesn’t stop us from doing a lot of things in life that we know we shouldn’t do.

Weigh the outcome against the potential consequence. If that’s still not enough, here’s some sage advice from one of our pros:

Consider the order of your priorities. If publishing fast is more important to you than the impact factor of the journal there are numerous good but low- to mid-tier impact factor (IF) journals out there that will likely give you a quick initial response. Additionally, many journals will have an average turnaround time/time to first decision listed somewhere on their websites. Multiple submission is a hard “no,” so if fast publication is a priority, identify journals with a lower IF that will accept manuscripts based on the rigor of scientific research and narrow down the list using the turnaround time information from the journal website, if available. –Vishal Gor, PhD, Edanz Author Guidance Consultant

Final words on multiple submission

Despite wasting time and resources, redundant submission of the same work is an unethical and potentially illegal practice. Overlapping publication will get you in trouble.

Don’t risk it. Good communication among authors is one of the easiest ways to make sure you don’t make this potentially fatal authorship mistake. If you’re a younger research, or not sure what to do, consult with your adviser, a senior colleague, and feel free to get in touch with us for some advice .

* Edanz is an associate member of COPE.

Ding, D., Nguyen, B., Gebel, K., Bauman, A., Bero, L. (2020). “Duplicate and salami publication: A prevalence study of journal policies”  International Journal of Epidemiology, 49 (1), 281-288.  https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyz187

Leopold S. S. (2013). “Editorial: Duplicate submission and dual publication: what is so wrong with them?” Clinical O rthopaedics and R elated R esearch , 471 (5), 1401-1402. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11999-013-2916-8

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How to Write and Publish Your Research in a Journal

Last Updated: February 26, 2024 Fact Checked

Choosing a Journal

Writing the research paper, editing & revising your paper, submitting your paper, navigating the peer review process, research paper help.

This article was co-authored by Matthew Snipp, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Cheyenne Main . C. Matthew Snipp is the Burnet C. and Mildred Finley Wohlford Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Sociology at Stanford University. He is also the Director for the Institute for Research in the Social Science’s Secure Data Center. He has been a Research Fellow at the U.S. Bureau of the Census and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He has published 3 books and over 70 articles and book chapters on demography, economic development, poverty and unemployment. He is also currently serving on the National Institute of Child Health and Development’s Population Science Subcommittee. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. There are 13 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 696,796 times.

Publishing a research paper in a peer-reviewed journal allows you to network with other scholars, get your name and work into circulation, and further refine your ideas and research. Before submitting your paper, make sure it reflects all the work you’ve done and have several people read over it and make comments. Keep reading to learn how you can choose a journal, prepare your work for publication, submit it, and revise it after you get a response back.

Things You Should Know

• Create a list of journals you’d like to publish your work in and choose one that best aligns with your topic and your desired audience.
• Prepare your manuscript using the journal’s requirements and ask at least 2 professors or supervisors to review your paper.
• Write a cover letter that “sells” your manuscript, says how your research adds to your field and explains why you chose the specific journal you’re submitting to.

• Ask your professors or supervisors for well-respected journals that they’ve had good experiences publishing with and that they read regularly.
• Many journals also only accept specific formats, so by choosing a journal before you start, you can write your article to their specifications and increase your chances of being accepted.
• If you’ve already written a paper you’d like to publish, consider whether your research directly relates to a hot topic or area of research in the journals you’re looking into.

• Review the journal’s peer review policies and submission process to see if you’re comfortable creating or adjusting your work according to their standards.
• Open-access journals can increase your readership because anyone can access them.

• Scientific research papers: Instead of a “thesis,” you might write a “research objective” instead. This is where you state the purpose of your research.
• “This paper explores how George Washington’s experiences as a young officer may have shaped his views during difficult circumstances as a commanding officer.”
• “This paper contends that George Washington’s experiences as a young officer on the 1750s Pennsylvania frontier directly impacted his relationship with his Continental Army troops during the harsh winter at Valley Forge.”

• Scientific research papers: Include a “materials and methods” section with the step-by-step process you followed and the materials you used. [5] X Research source
• Read other research papers in your field to see how they’re written. Their format, writing style, subject matter, and vocabulary can help guide your own paper. [6] X Research source

• If you’re writing about George Washington’s experiences as a young officer, you might emphasize how this research changes our perspective of the first president of the U.S.
• Link this section to your thesis or research objective.
• If you’re writing a paper about ADHD, you might discuss other applications for your research.

• Scientific research papers: You might include your research and/or analytical methods, your main findings or results, and the significance or implications of your research.
• Try to get as many people as you can to read over your abstract and provide feedback before you submit your paper to a journal.

• They might also provide templates to help you structure your manuscript according to their specific guidelines. [11] X Research source

• Not all journal reviewers will be experts on your specific topic, so a non-expert “outsider’s perspective” can be valuable.

• If you have a paper on the purification of wastewater with fungi, you might use both the words “fungi” and “mushrooms.”
• Use software like iThenticate, Turnitin, or PlagScan to check for similarities between the submitted article and published material available online. [15] X Research source

• Header: Address the editor who will be reviewing your manuscript by their name, include the date of submission, and the journal you are submitting to.
• First paragraph: Include the title of your manuscript, the type of paper it is (like review, research, or case study), and the research question you wanted to answer and why.
• Second paragraph: Explain what was done in your research, your main findings, and why they are significant to your field.
• Third paragraph: Explain why the journal’s readers would be interested in your work and why your results are important to your field.
• Conclusion: State the author(s) and any journal requirements that your work complies with (like ethical standards”).
• “We confirm that this manuscript has not been published elsewhere and is not under consideration by another journal.”
• “All authors have approved the manuscript and agree with its submission to [insert the name of the target journal].”

• Submit your article to only one journal at a time.
• When submitting online, use your university email account. This connects you with a scholarly institution, which can add credibility to your work.

• Accept: Only minor adjustments are needed, based on the provided feedback by the reviewers. A first submission will rarely be accepted without any changes needed.
• Revise and Resubmit: Changes are needed before publication can be considered, but the journal is still very interested in your work.
• Reject and Resubmit: Extensive revisions are needed. Your work may not be acceptable for this journal, but they might also accept it if significant changes are made.
• Reject: The paper isn’t and won’t be suitable for this publication, but that doesn’t mean it might not work for another journal.

• Try organizing the reviewer comments by how easy it is to address them. That way, you can break your revisions down into more manageable parts.
• If you disagree with a comment made by a reviewer, try to provide an evidence-based explanation when you resubmit your paper.

• If you’re resubmitting your paper to the same journal, include a point-by-point response paper that talks about how you addressed all of the reviewers’ comments in your revision. [22] X Research source
• If you’re not sure which journal to submit to next, you might be able to ask the journal editor which publications they recommend.

Expert Q&A

You might also like.

• If reviewers suspect that your submitted manuscript plagiarizes another work, they may refer to a Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) flowchart to see how to move forward. [23] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• ↑ https://www.wiley.com/en-us/network/publishing/research-publishing/choosing-a-journal/6-steps-to-choosing-the-right-journal-for-your-research-infographic
• ↑ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13187-020-01751-z
• ↑ https://libguides.unomaha.edu/c.php?g=100510&p=651627
• ↑ http://www.canberra.edu.au/library/start-your-research/research_help/publishing-research
• ↑ https://writingcenter.fas.harvard.edu/conclusions
• ↑ https://writing.wisc.edu/handbook/assignments/writing-an-abstract-for-your-research-paper/
• ↑ https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/book-authors-editors/your-publication-journey/manuscript-preparation
• ↑ https://apus.libanswers.com/writing/faq/2391
• ↑ https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/library/keyword/search-strategy
• ↑ https://ifis.libguides.com/journal-publishing-guide/submitting-your-paper
• ↑ https://www.springer.com/kr/authors-editors/authorandreviewertutorials/submitting-to-a-journal-and-peer-review/cover-letters/10285574
• ↑ http://www.apa.org/monitor/sep02/publish.aspx
• ↑ Matthew Snipp, PhD. Research Fellow, U.S. Bureau of the Census. Expert Interview. 26 March 2020.

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To publish a research paper, ask a colleague or professor to review your paper and give you feedback. Once you've revised your work, familiarize yourself with different academic journals so that you can choose the publication that best suits your paper. Make sure to look at the "Author's Guide" so you can format your paper according to the guidelines for that publication. Then, submit your paper and don't get discouraged if it is not accepted right away. You may need to revise your paper and try again. To learn about the different responses you might get from journals, see our reviewer's explanation below. Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Published a research paper? What next??

Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at College of Medicine and Health Sciences, National University of Science and Technology, Sohar, Sultanate of Oman

In our earlier editorials, we have already discussed the importance of conducting good-quality medical research, composing an original research paper, and getting the paper published successfully.[ 1 , 2 , 3 ] We have also given a roadmap for reviewing an original research paper.[ 4 ] The current editorial deals with some important post-publication issues that every author should be acquainted with.

Replying to Letters to Editor Received on the Published Manuscript

After the publication of the research paper, the editors may receive one or more “letters to editors,” supporting or criticizing or commenting on the published research paper. If the contents of such letters arouse genuine concerns/issues, the editor will ask for a rebuttal/reply to the same, from the authors of the original paper and publish both of these in a subsequent issue of the journal. It is the responsibility of the corresponding author of the original paper to contact the co-authors and provide a reply that has been drafted and approved by all the authors.[ 5 ] Such correspondence indicates that the paper has aroused sufficient interest in the readers. Replying to such letters gives the authors an opportunity to explain their research findings anew and also address issues that may not have been addressed in their research paper (published earlier).

Editorial Commentaries

The editor may invite an editorial commentary on the accepted research paper, which is usually published in the same issue as the original paper. The commentary is usually written by an expert in the concerned field (who would probably also have reviewed the article and recommended its publication). The purpose of the commentary is to provide a balanced view for interpreting the results of the study and give insights into the clinical applicability/relevance of the study findings. Such commentaries also reflect the experience and the opinion of the expert who is writing the commentary.

MEDLINE and Other indexation

The prestige of a publication rests in its representation in an “indexed journal” of a highly rated database such as MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Web of Science. Such indexation not only increases the prestige of a journal but also provides wider access to its content. MEDLINE, of the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), is one of the most widely used biomedical journal citation databases, containing more than 26 million articles (from 1946 to the present) published in more than 5,200 journals. It is available through PubMed free of charge and by subscription via database vendors (Ovid and EBSCO).[ 6 , 7 ] Publishers submit journals to the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-chartered advisory committee, the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee (LSTRC), which reviews and recommends journals for indexation in MEDLINE based on the scientific policy and scientific quality.[ 6 ] PubMed ( www.pubmed.gov ), developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the US NLM, is a free search engine for retrieval of the literature, having more than 30 million citations and abstracts on biomedical and life sciences across several NLM literature resources.[ 6 , 7 ] It provides access to all of MEDLINE, journals/manuscripts deposited in PubMed Central (PMC), and NCBI Bookshelf. The update occurs daily with reference data supplied directly by publishers, often before a journal issue is released. To be indexed in PubMed, a journal should be selected as a MEDLINE journal or be deposited to the PMC.[ 6 ]

Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms—a controlled and hierarchically organized vocabulary thesaurus—are used by the NLM to index and search biomedical literature. They provide an overview of an article's content through a set of terms pertaining to main headings (descriptors) and subheadings (qualifiers), with yearly updates. Indexers (generally librarians trained to read MEDLINE published articles) assign relevant MeSH indexing terms based on the content/concept of an article, using words from an official MeSH list.[ 8 ] The manual assignment of MeSH terms is laborious, subjective, time-consuming, and expensive, which has led to the development of the Medical Text Indexer (MTI), a MeSH prediction tool that assists NLM indexers by providing recommendations for MeSH terms.[ 9 ]

Scopus ( www.scopus.com ) is another subscription-based citation database produced by Elsevier Co. and maintained by independent subject matter experts. It indexes about 4,600 health science titles including 100% of MEDLINE and Embase coverage.[ 10 ]

Embase (Excerpta Medica Database) ( www.embase.com ) is a biomedical as well as a pharmacological bibliographic database. This subscription-based Elsevier database (32 million records of over 8,500 currently published journals since 1947) assists information managers and pharmacovigilance in licensed drugs. Emtree is the Embase thesaurus, and all journals listed in MEDLINE are also registered in Embase, with additional 2,900 journals unique to it.[ 11 ]

The Web of Science (Thomson Reuters) is an interdisciplinary subscription-based database with records (from 1900 onward) of multiple bibliographic databases. It includes Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI-EXPANDED), a medical database, and helps in article recovery and citation search.[ 7 ]

Publons ( http://publons.com/ ), a free commercial website, combines publications, citation metrics, peer-reviews, and journal editorial work, all in one place. It serves as a platform for publishers to seek and connect to peer-reviewers, reports global peer-review activity, and provides peer-review training for early-career researchers.[ 12 ]

Google Scholar ( http://scholar.google.com/ ), a mainstream free academic crawler-based search engine, has content across academic disciplines, countries, and languages, and over 380 million records. Indexing in Google Scholar enhances accessibility, sharing, and online citation worldwide, particularly for open-access (OA) journals. Google Scholar offers free alerts (via email) of citations to the authors of their publications indexed with it, once the authors register for such alerts. A Google Scholar search also focuses on individual articles and not journals, improves article retrieval (including unpublished conference material), shows more frequently cited works higher in search, and lists the papers citing original papers (via “Cited by”).[ 13 ]

Posting of the Pdf of the Final Published Article on Websites/Servers

Posting of the complete paper or the portable document format (“pdf”) of the final published paper on websites/servers (self-archiving) may be done only if the paper has been published in an OA journal and if the journal policy allows such a posting (this precaution is to be taken to prevent copyright infringement). Some journals allow the revised accepted (pre-print) version of the manuscript to be shared but not the final printed pdf version. These details of the necessary permissions required are usually given on the website of the journal/publisher. It is the responsibility of the author who is posting such a pre-print version to check whether the journal policy allows him/her to do so. Usually, the journal editors/publishers send the final, published pdf copy to the corresponding author. The corresponding author may then share it with the co-authors of the paper. However, it should be remembered that the copyright of the paper is with the publisher (usually) and the publisher provides the pdf to the corresponding author with a rider that mentions that “the pdf is for personal and educational purposes only and should not be distributed or printed commercially or distributed systematically.” This is especially true for the non-OA journals.

Getting the Research Noticed by the Medical Fraternity

It is necessary that a research paper gets read by the medical fraternity all over the world. For this, there are various avenues such as sharing the title and abstract or their links with professional colleagues on social media (such as Telegram, Whatsapp, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) or via emails on groups/listserv, displaying the title and abstract on the website of the journal (in the table of contents of the journal) or the website of the institution where the work was carried out, posting the title and abstract on websites such as the Researchgate ( www.researchgate.net ) or Mendeley ( www.mendeley.com ), discussion of the paper at journal clubs, and inclusion of the results in subsequent presentations at conferences/seminars by the authors. There may be some limitations on sharing the full text of the paper or the pdf version of the published paper as discussed earlier in this editorial. The journal editor/publisher may also send details to the corresponding author on how to increase the visibility of their paper. The increased visibility is most likely to translate into better citations and research impact for the paper. The visibility of the paper can be enhanced by (after checking the journal's OA policy)

• The journal's website and its bibliographic linking.
• Institutional open archive repository, where one may post the pdf in the archive with a link to the article on the journal's website.
• By depositing the article in a subject-based OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) compliant repository (subject-wise list of repositories is available from http://opcit.eprints.org/explorearchives.shtml#disciplinary ).
• Linking the paper from as many websites as possible using citation and social bookmarking tools such as GetCited ( http://www.getcited.org/add/ ), CiteULike ( http://www.citeulike.org/register ), Connotea ( http://www.connotea.org/register ), Zotero ( http://www.zotero.org/ ), and Stumbleupon ( http://www.stumbleupon.com/sign_up.php?pre2 = hp_join ).
• Linking the article from an appropriate topic in Wikipedia.
• Depositing the paper with the NLM's PubMed Central, if the authors have received an NIH grant ( http://www.nihms.nih.gov/db/sub.cgi ) as NIH insists that publicly funded research should be available to everyone without having to pay.
• Linking the paper from the author's personal/institutional web pages.

The Journal of Postgraduate Medicine approves self-archiving of articles (final accepted version) on OAI (Open Archives Initiative)—compliant institutional/subject-based repository.[ 14 ] Self-archiving enables maximum visibility, impact, access, and usage and can be done by the author himself or via digital archivers in the author's institution/library.[ 15 ] Self-archiving can be expedited by the installation of OAI-compliant Eprint Archives in university/research institutions, and self-archiving pre-peer-review preprints (without the embargo period) and post-peer-review post-prints (or corrigenda file) (after the embargo period) on the author's personal website, company/institutional repository or archive, not-for-profit subject-based preprint servers or repositories.[ 15 , 16 ] “Embargo period” refers to the time post-publication (commonly ranging from 12 to 24 months), after which a subscribed article is made freely available/openly accessible to users.

Open Access

Traditionally, publishing an article would incur no charges toward author submission, peer-review, and publication. However, users are often charged a subscription fee for full-article access, which limits free access to the literature. The novel concept of OA has emerged in the last two decades through pioneers such as BioMed Central and Public Library of Science (PLoS) with online-only journals.[ 17 ] Fully-OA journals make all their articles freely and immediately accessible online (without embargo period) under a Creative Commons (CC) or equivalent open copyright license permitting anyone to “read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full-texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose” through two established routes—“gold” and “green”.[ 18 , 19 ] In the “gold” route, the authors pay a fee—an article processing charge (APC)–to facilitate free and immediate access to their published articles. These charges are journal-specific and may range from 500 to 5000 US dollars, which are often prohibitive and unaffordable by Indian authors. If financial support for OA research is provided by the author's institution or organizations, such as the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), and INCLEN Trust (International Clinical Epidemiology Network- INCLEN), then Indian authors may be able to afford these publication charges. In the “green” route, the author publishes the research article in any journal and then archives it in an institutional repository (University, a central repository [e.g. PubMed Central] or an OA website) based on the journal self-archiving policies.[ 17 , 19 ] This balances the researcher's freedom to publish and share work, and the publisher's control on quality. Publishing in a reputable OA journal provides versatility and visibility, and in return the academic researcher receives a higher research impact through citation counts.[ 20 ]

Many OA journals use CC licenses, an easy alternative to standard copyrights, permitting authors to determine the use of their work broadly, minus the need to look into individual permission requests. A CC license allows copying and redistribution of material in any medium/format (sharing) and remixing, transforming, and building upon the material (adapting). Restrictive elements such as “Attribution” require users to cite the creator of the work, “Non-Commercial” prohibits users from making commercial use of the work, “No Derivates” prohibit users from making modifications to the work, and “Share Alike” require users to apply the same licenses to a new work they create with the original work. These clauses limit the re-use, but provide useful protection to scholars, research subjects, and the OA nature of the publication. The elements can be combined, as is the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license, or CC-BY-NC-SA, or the Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivatives or CC-BY-NC-ND.[ 21 ]

The increase in the number of OA journals has often led to questions about their quality. This and the increasing pressure on researchers to “publish” or “perish” has fostered an increasing growth in medical journals, hoping to attract eager young academic researchers to publish their work in their journals.[ 5 ] The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is a community-curated database that provides comprehensive access and quality control over the content of OA scientific and scholarly journals. DOAJ aims to increase the visibility and ease of use of OA journals, thereby increasing their usage and impact.[ 22 ]

The Journal Impact Factor and Personal Research Impact Factors

Several journal-/author-/article-level metric tools are available via indexing databases (e.g., Scopus and Web of Science) that enable users to track the scholarly impact of a journal, author, or article. One of the most popular ways of assessing a journal's importance is via its journal impact factor (JIF). The 2-year JIF (in any given year) is the ratio between the number of citations received in that year for publications in that journal in the two preceding years and the total number of “citable items” published in that journal during the two previous years. An impact factor could also consider shorter or longer periods of citations and sources.[ 23 ]

Author impact factor (AIF) similarly evaluates the impact of an individual author; however, because the number is generally not large, other citation metrics are used.[ 24 ] One such prominent influence measure is “h-index” (or Hirsch index), which effectively combines papers (indicating quantity/productivity) with citations (indicating quality/impact), thus evaluating an individual author's publication career. It is a count of the largest number of papers (h) from an author that has at least (h) number of citations. It enables a comparison of researchers from the same field with equally long careers, predicts future scientific achievements, and helps in decisions pertaining to tenure positions/grants.[ 25 ] The “i10-index” (introduced by Google), in contrast, is a simple tally of a researcher's publications with at least 10 citations. The “i10-index” is straightforward, easy to calculate (using “My Citations” on Google Scholar), and helps to identify important/influential papers out of an author's publications (those that are cited at least 10 times). However, it is restricted to Google Scholar and does not account for the total number of publications and total citations of an author, thus not giving a clear impression of an author's research productivity.[ 26 ]

Citation analysis involves measuring the number of citations that a particular work has received, indicating the overall quality of that work, whereas citation count is the total number of an individual's citations. Citation counts measure the impact and performance of individual researchers as well as departments, research institutions, universities, books, journals, and nations.[ 27 ]

Citation-based metrics may take years to accumulate and are not always the best indicator of practical impact in fields, such as clinical medicine. Article-level metrics (ALMs) measure the impact/uptake of an individual journal article on the scientific community post-publication and include usage, citations, social bookmarking and dissemination activity, media and blog coverage, discussion activity and ratings.[ 28 ] They thus measure the dissemination and reach of published research articles in practical fields. PLOS uses the category labels of Viewed, Cited, Saved, Discussed, and Recommended.[ 28 ] ALMs are valuable to researchers (track and share the impact of published work), research institutions, funders, and publishers. The PLOS Application Programming Interface (API) for ALMs is freely and publicly available from https://web.archive.org/web/20140408224328/http://api.plos.org/alm/using-the-alm-api/ and allows users with programming skills to extract data for various research purposes.[ 29 ]

The ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) [ https://orcid.org/register ]

ORCID, via its unique 16-digit author identifier, provides a digital name—or an iD—that uniquely and persistently identifies researchers and other contributors to their research effort. By connecting iDs to different research activities (grant proposal submissions, manuscripts to journal publishers, and datasets to data repositories) and affiliations across multiple research information platforms, ORCID enables recognition and reduces the reporting burden for researchers. As a researcher and author, it is important to be recognized and receive full credit for their contributions and research in work. The ORCID provides a unique identifier for the research that is linked to names rather than institutions, thus researchers can maintain the same iD throughout their career, even when their institutional affiliation changes.[ 30 ] It allows researchers to receive full credit for their contributions and eliminates mistaken identity, especially when there are multiple authors with the same name. It also makes the submission process easier by allowing users to sign in to multiple journal submission sites with one username and password. ORCID can be applied to research outputs to identify, validate, and confirm authorship as well as track research output. Some journals now print the ORCID number of an author in the publication. A single click on the displayed ORCID numbers gives the reader the entire list of publications by the author. It also easily integrates with other databases such as Crossref, ResearchID, and SCOPUS.[ 30 , 31 ]

Researcher ID (developed by Thomas Reuters and used in Web of Science) and Scopus Author ID (developed by Elsevier and used in Scopus) are similar identifiers provided by subscription-based proprietary systems. Researcher ID (obtained by creating a Researcher ID account) allows researchers to manage their publication lists, track citations and h-index, and identify potential collaborators. A Scopus Author ID is automatically assigned to an author with a Scopus-indexed publication and enables tracking publications indexed in the Scopus citation database and building metric reports.[ 32 ]

Concluding Remarks

In the current scenario, increasing importance is being given to research and publications—as a measure of individual/institutional progress as well as a benchmark to determine recruitment, promotions, and funding. Thus, it has become mandatory for an individual to keep working on quality research, followed by writing and publishing it successfully.[ 33 ] However, publication is not the end of an author's work but the beginning of another important process. The value of a publication lies in its wide accessibility and impact. Bibliographic databases, such as MEDLINE, Embase, and Scopus, compile data from a selection of journals (such documented journals are “indexed” in that database), thus improving the visibility and access on a literature search. The use of database-specific thesaurus/controlled vocabulary such as MeSH (for MEDLINE) and Emtree (for EMBASE) enables precise search outcomes.[ 7 ] An increase in the number of OA journals and processes such as “self-archiving” has opened avenues for the wide dissemination of published information.[ 15 ] Many articles are freely available online immediately after publication (gold OA), whereas many permit the authors to archive in an institutional repository, subject to journal policies.[ 17 ] The use of the CC license and its restrictive elements allows the authors to choose how their work can be used.[ 21 ] Bibliometrics help to measure academic/scholarly activity and scientific impact, but should not be obsessed over.[ 23 ] Their shortcomings in the true measurement of the impact of journals, articles, and authors have necessitated a suitable replacement, one with a more effective and meaningful evaluation of the true influence of research. The availability of free resources such as ORCID has linked an individual's research over various platforms and provided consolidated data of one's research activities. It is important that authors are aware of these post-publication resources and utilize them proactively to disseminate one's research and ensure a meaningful research impact.

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• 27 March 2024

Tweeting your research paper boosts engagement but not citations

• Bianca Nogrady

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Even before complaints about X’s declining quality, posting a paper on the social-media platform did not lead to a boost in citations. Credit: Matt Cardy/Getty

Posting about a research paper on social-media platform X (formerly known as Twitter) doesn’t translate into a bump in citations, according to a study that looked at 550 papers.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00922-y

Branch, T. A. et al. PLoS ONE 19 , e0292201 (2024).

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Haustein, S., Peters, I., Sugimoto, C. R., Thelwall, M. & Larivière, V. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 65, 656–669 (2014).

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