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Submitting a paper to another journal after no response to a withdrawal notice?

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

After a paper languished under review for over a year with no replies to inquiries, I wrote to retract it. Two months later I’ve had no reply to the retraction and I can still view my submission in the system. Is it safe to submit it to another journal or would it still be considered “under review” at the first journal and therefore against the rules?

It seems to me that the OP did their due diligence to withdraw, and that they should feel free to send the paper elsewhere given that the original journal has been unresponsive.

What do readers think?

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3 responses to “Submitting a paper to another journal after no response to a withdrawal notice?”

  1. CH

    Your retraction is a notice to the editor, not a request that they have the option to oblige. At best, the editor(s) could have contacted you shortly thereafter letting you know that the paper had actually just received comments back from reviewers with a verdict, or that it was awaiting a verdict by an area editor, if such were actually the case. This possibility would suggest you to wait one, maybe two weeks tops to give the editors the requisite time to respond before submitting elsewhere. Given the two month silence, this possibility is highly unlikely and your most prudent action here would be to submit to a new journal immediately.

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  2. Anonymous

    Of course you can submit it to another journal at this point. If you’ve e-mailed them to withdraw the paper, you’re good–it’s their problem if they don’t reply to your e-mail. So go ahead and don’t let them hold your paper up for one second longer.

    If you’re feeling generous, you can e-mail them again. If they don’t reply to that e-mail, and you’re feeling *super* generous, you can occasionally check your submission in their system, and if it does ever go out to reviewers, e-mail them a third time and tell them you’ve already withdrawn the paper from consideration. You can also try ccing extra people on these e-mails if you wish (the EiC but also associate editors etc.) to improve the chances of somebody paying attention to it.

    But to be clear, all of the things in the paragraph above are supererogatory. They would be nice to do, to decrease the chances that some hapless reviewer gets assigned your paper at some point when you’ve withdrawn it. (And it might be awkward if they’re also the person reviewing the paper for the new journal you submit it to.) But when you’ve e-mailed a journal to withdraw the paper, and they haven’t replied to *that* e-mail after 2 months, you’re 100% in the clear to move on.

    –Tim O’Keefe

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  3. Corvus splendens

    Hard yes to it being safe to submit elsewhere. At least until after clearing review, and perhaps even until some time after that, “I withdraw” is a complete declarative illocutionary act, regardless of whether the editor acknowledges it in a timely fashion.
    Save a copy of your withdrawal email just in case, then send the paper off somewhere else.

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