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When a paper is under review and you have an invite to submit elsewhere?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Suppose I have a paper under review at Journal X. The editor of a very good invited venue asked me to send it to them instead, but it's got to be in by the end of the month. I don't know if Journal X is going to make a decision by then.

Is there anything ethical I can do to get my paper back from Journal X by the end of the month? For example, would it be permissible to withdraw the paper and apologize profusely? Or, barring that, perhaps I could nudge the editors of Journal X for faster decision?

Good questions. I've been in similar positions before, and have never quite known what to do. Do any readers have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

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6 responses to “When a paper is under review and you have an invite to submit elsewhere?”

  1. lucky author

    I was in this situation once. I can share my story. I had a paper under review for inclusion in a PSA conference programme. In the meantime, after presenting the paper at a conference I was invited to publish it in a top 10 journal (the bottom end of the top 10). I told the editor that I had the paper currently undeer review for the PSA (wwhich does publish some of the papers accepted). I asked if he could wait, and accept it if the PSA does not. He agreed. Maybe it will work out that way for you.

    Reply
  2. favor

    I see nothing wrong with withdrawing the paper. Given the slow turnaround times and overburdened editors at many journals, you may be doing them a favor.

    Reply
  3. Michel

    How long has it been under review? How likely are you to get a decision in a few weeks, based on the journal’s average turnaround time?
    If you’re close to the average turnaround, I’d ask the invited venue (IV) for an extension, explaining that the paper is currently under review elsewhere. In fact, it’s almost certainly easier for IV to grant an extension than for X to hurry things along.
    If you’re not close at all, then don’t worry about withdrawing it. The way referees usually work, they’re not likely to have started on it yet

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  4. Emanuele

    Withdrawing a paper is ok, but the real question is whether it is worth wasting the time you have already invested in the original submission. Let me explain.
    If the ‘invited venue’ is a done deal, then it may be worth, especially if you suspect that the journal you have submitted your work will reject the paper. You can have evidence for this: for instance, maybe you got a R&R, but you see that it would be very difficult to convince Reviewer 2 to change their mind.
    But if the invited venue is just an invitation to submit a paper to a topical collection of, let’s say, Synthese, then things are different: it’s difficult to get a paper accepted in such a journal (it’s a lottery), and it will take a lot of time anyway because reviewers are generally overwhelmed.

    Reply
  5. Bill Vanderburgh

    Can you submit a related paper to the invited volume, rather than the one under review? Generally, invited pieces are less valuable for tenure, etc., so it would be worthwhile to get the paper published in the traditional way.

    Reply
  6. Karl

    First, you need to prioritize what is best for you and your publication record. If you feel a guaranteed invited publication (or whatever) will be best for your career, do that. If you are worried about the professional norms, I strongly suspect you’ll be fine if at some point before the decision, you withdraw the paper. The editor can scratch your name off their “pending” list and move on with their lives.
    Here are two things that might make you feel better about that. First, when I was a grad student I worked for a professor who was the editor of a fancy enough journal. We met about once a week to go through the new papers that came in, issue desk rejections, send out the reviews, correspon with authors, etc. Then he would buy me lunch and we would go about our days. Ocassionally he dealt with a reviewer himself, or we missed a week, especially during the summer. But generally the goal was to get a paper off our docket by either accepting it or rejecting it. Second, I have reviewed enough papers myself to know that sometimes I sit on a paper for a while. However, once I get around to reading the paper, I write the review quickly and get it to the journal as soon as I can. This suggests to me that the largest delays come from trying to find a reviewer and hearing back from them. Meaning, that the bulk of the time you are waiting to hear from a journal is NOT while the paper is actually being read and the review written, but in the delays waiting for a reviewer to be found and for the reviewer to actually read the paper. Thus, if you withdraw a paper between submission and decision, chances are you have not wasted too much time. It was likely time that the review was sitting in someone’s inbox waiting to be read. Sure, the editors wasted some time looking for a reviewer, but not all that much relative to the time the paper sat around. It is also possible that the editor is just about to send you the final acceptance after much work was put in, but the odds of that are again, relatively low.

    Reply

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