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Publishing strategies: submitting two papers to a journal at once?

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

I would appreciate some advice about submission strategy. This relates to recent discussions about publishing multiple papers in the same journal, but my question concerns the submission and review stage.

I have two papers that seem like good fits for the same journal. Paper A is already under external review there. Paper B is ready to submit and, in my own assessment, is much stronger.

Should I submit Paper B to the same journal now, or wait until Paper A receives a decision? I am unsure whether having two papers under review at the same journal is frowned upon or could bias editorial decisions. The journal does not explicitly prohibit it.

My main concern is that because of Paper B’s somewhat idiosyncratic focus, submitting it elsewhere would likely mean aiming one or two tiers lower, which I am reluctant to do unless indeed necessary.

Any advice from people familiar with editorial practices would be greatly appreciated.

What do readers think?

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6 responses to “Publishing strategies: submitting two papers to a journal at once?”

  1. Anno

    I only know of journals who don’t want people to submit multiple papers at the same time; I don’t know of any journal that welcomes this practice. In any case, my advice would be to either (1) ask the editor, (2) wait until you receive a decision on the other paper, or (3) to send it to another journal that is at least as good (even if the odds are lower, at least you are not ‘wasting’ time, if that was your concern). I would go for option 3, but you might of course have a different preference.

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  2. Anonymous

    Just send the paper to another journal. Unsolicited advice: writing papers that can only fit in one specific journal is a very bad publication strategy.

    Reply
  3. Michel

    Absolutely not.

    I would also caution against re-submitting work to the same journal too quickly: flooding it with your work is bad form. I generally only submit somewhere once a year, with occasional twos, but always with a bit of a gap in between.

    The paper may well be a better fit for the journal; for me, that would’ve a reason to send it to a stretch journal first, since it’s preferred home is currently busy.

    Reply
    1. Anonymous

      Can you say more why it would be bad form to send many papers to the same journal? I would have thought there would be no problem so long as one does not have two papers under review at the same time.

      Reply
      1. Michel

        It just floods the journal and hogs its referee resources. If a journal has a fast turnaround time, then you’re basically punishing them for it. I mean, you could conceivably send almost a dozen papers to Analysis in a year. But if you did that, I’m pretty sure you’d start getting the Evil Eye.

        Better to distribute the burden across journals. It’s not like there’s a shortage.

  4. Anonymous

    I don’t have a sense of the norms. But a piece of anecdata: I submitted one paper to a journal and then another to that same journal maybe 6 months later. (They were both very good fits for it.) After revisions, they were both accepted. Because of the timings of those revisions and resubmissions, they were published by the journal in consecutive volumes.

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