On the Thorny Issue of Single Submission

Abstract

This Opinion highlights varying viewpoints on the single-submission policy in scientific publishing, which has recently come under attack. The rule permits the sequential, rather than simultaneous, submission of a manuscript to more than one journal and dictates that an author(s) must wait for a response from one journal before resubmitting the same work to another for consideration. A corollary is that legitimising multiple submissions would create more problems than it could solve. This article is, therefore, in favour of maintaining the status quo.

“Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.”

—Madame Germaine de Staël (1766–1817)

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”

—Anonymous

The clamour for the abolition of the single-submission rule in scientific publishing appears to be becoming more vociferous [1,2,3,4]. The single-submission policy prohibits the simultaneous submission of a manuscript to multiple journals and dictates that an author(s) must wait for a response from one journal before they can submit their work to another [5]. This rule was devised to conserve the resources and time of journals and reviewers as well as protect the quality of scientific record, with peer-review as the key filter, to ensure that only validated, high-quality research is published and disseminated, one submission at a time [2,3,4]. Notably, several factors influence this requirement to submit manuscripts for publication sequentially rather than simultaneously to different journals. These include ethical, legal, business and reputational considerations [6].

It is noteworthy that chief amongst the concerns of the proponents of the abolishment of this rule include lengthy publication times, journals and reviewers’ biases, and the sometimes-seeming lack of pellucidity in the process [2,3]. Oftentimes, these complaints are tied to the peer-review system, which is generally regarded as the gold standard of scientific integrity and legitimacy. Nonetheless, peer-review, though imperfect, remains geared towards assessing the quality, impact and accuracy of the hypotheses investigated [1,7,8].

Significantly, peer-review ensures that research is rigorously scrutinised by experts, with a view to maintaining the quality of published research [7,9]. It is designed to serve as a gauge for good science, filter flawed or prejudiced studies, and act as a bastion of credibility for published works [1,3,10]. Essentially, the process of peer-review is considered an indispensable tool for ensuring that the academic and research communities, relevant stakeholders and public are only fed well-reasoned, evidence-based and methodologically sound information [7].

There is no gainsaying the fact that the major goals of publishing are knowledge-sharing and information dissemination, typically propelled by or fulcrumed on the betterment of humankind and society [11,12,13]. Other considerations, such as career progression, horn-tooting and financial gain, or even “one-upper syndrome”, though germane, are secondary and should not be allowed to drive the narrative.

Firstly, to the issue of time-sensitive manuscripts, it is established fact that humans are governed by time and space. It is also a considered opinion that there is no flippancy in the aphorism, “today’s extraordinary is tomorrow’s mundane” [14]. In the same vein, most reputable journals are known to have facilities for the prompt dissemination of time-critical or seminal information in appreciation of its value and exigency. It is undeniable, nevertheless, that the process can occasionally be subjective, but that is a different discourse altogether. The overarching point, notwithstanding, is that a process is in place, and it would be counterintuitive for any journal worth its salt to “hoard” [3] such papers. That said, promptitude of reviews and expeditious publication are grave ethical obligations that must be shouldered—in word and deed—by both publishers and journals with great solemnity and aplomb [15].

On the flipside, could the proverbial “one person’s food is another’s poison” be at play here? Is an author’s “blockbuster”, an editor’s “bust”? Put differently, are authors overestimating the value of their work [16]? Perhaps, it is the Rashomon effect in action?… That word “subjectivity” again! It appears we cannot escape its nuances. Another possibility is that this is a manifestation of the publishing industry’s variant of the Veblen effect, wherein “consumers” and “goods” are substituted with “authors” and “manuscripts”, respectively. The Veblen effect defines a phenomenon where consumers perceive higher-priced goods to be better and of greater value than they actually are based on their costs [17]. In any case, it remains to be seen what the recently burgeoning preprint server and database services [18,19] as well as Open Access [20] hold in store. They appear to be veritable panaceas to the triune challenges of time-sensitive articles, unavailable expert reviewers and requisite author credits and citations, if properly managed [21,22].

It is incontrovertible that scholarly publishing, as currently is, still leaves room for improvement. It is, therefore, imperative that such drawbacks as dilatory response times, unreasonable delays, biases, opacities and dilettantish reviewers and editors must be tackled, where they exist. Authors should also continually seek to improve their craft, eschew unethical behaviours and plagiarism, where applicable, and be more intentional. Most aptly, publishers and researchers alike must be wary of any attempts to “game the system” [13] if the academic research enterprise is to maintain its integrity and accolades [23,24].

Likewise, the prevailing proliferation of journals could also prove to be a malady [25,26]. Journal proliferation, in itself, is not necessarily disagreeable as it could be symptomatic of growth but could also be detrimental if left unregulated. The rise in the numbers of under/untrained reviewers and editors as well as unscrupulous activities [27,28] are ominous cases in point. Not forgetting the rampant threats of predatory journals [29] and journal hijacks [30]. Pressing ahead, publishers should embrace and prioritize the training of their editors and reviewers [9], entrench best publishing practices and ethics, as well as implement sustainable quality assurance and control protocols. Pedagogically, mandating courses in rudimentary publishing as compulsory for researchers and academics, since the dissemination of results is an intrinsic part of research, may help ameliorate the dearth of competent practitioners.

In truth, unwarranted delays in the publication of results can be frustrating, damaging and anti-career advancement, but these circumstances are not exclusive to early-career researchers and/or under-represented demographics, as have been previously [1,2,3] suggested. More importantly, they are not wholly attributable to the single-submission policy [31]. Neither is it entirely correct to blame the prohibition of multiple submissions for the apparent slow speed of disseminating research findings [4]. Also, it is instructive to observe that although the origins of the single-submission rule are steeped in the pre-digital era and impelled by the onerous task of protecting copyrights, the automation of administrative and auxiliary tasks in publishing, and possible overload of the peer-review system [8], are by no means responsible for its observance and continuance [6,32]. At the least, it remains a benchmark because it is fit for purpose.

Relatedly, the peer-review system, which ought to be painstakingly thorough, has often been blamed for the delays experienced in the manuscript submission to publication process [33]. Admittedly, the job of gatekeeping can be onerous, cumbersome and measured but it is equally susceptible to abuse [10]. Significantly, the establishment of peer-review services [34,35], independent of journals and publishers, to furnish pre-submission reviews as a time-saving measure, has been volunteered as a probable solution but its uptake has been less than enthusiastic [36]. Conversely, simulation studies on the publication delay control processes of journals have been designed, using cybernetics, to mitigate publication delays and help editors expediently manage the publishing process [37,38].

Some opinions [1,2,4] suggest that multiple or simultaneous submissions, which can lead to double or multiple publications in two or more journals, can help authors garner diverse feedback from multiple sources and achieve maximum dissemination of their work as well as exert greater control on the timely outcome of manuscripts. This may be true, but the argument pales in rationale when juxtaposed against the notion that the inadvertent double-counting or inappropriate weighting of the results of a single study can distort available evidence in the health sciences and medicine, for instance [39]. Besides, duplicate publications arrogate undue advantage in academia where productivity is partly measured by the number of publications [40,41]. Contrariwise, it has also been averred that sequential submissions delay the dissemination of clinical research results, with attendant harmful effects on the health of patients [16].

However, it would be remiss not to mention that the single-submission system has no safeguards against the resubmission elsewhere (by authors) of rejected, adequately reviewed manuscripts without addressing the lacunae raised by expert reviewers [7,8]. This does not augur well for the art or its development. Markedly, single-submission advocates concede the latter but are quick to contend that such knowledge gaps, if fundamental, would be eventually found out by subsequent reviewers or journals. It does appear, therefore, that the benefits of the single-submission policy greatly outweigh the shortcomings [42]. It is also gratifying that software, which can aid the detection of manuscripts that are simultaneously submitted to multiple journals, are in development [43]. This technology has the capacity to improve publishers’ article transfer services and prevent redundant publications.

Furthermore, it is tenable to posit that at the core of this non-/simultaneous submission debate in scientific publishing are time lapse and management [3,4,6,16]. Authors are required to wait for a decision from one journal before submitting to another and cannot stake one journal against another. Contrarily, in legal publishing, for example, where authors are allowed to submit a single manuscript to as many periodicals as possible in order to increase their probability of acceptance, situations sometimes arise where lesser-known journals, in spite of their timely and robust review processes, are dismissed in favour of more esteemed journals [15]. This can be debilitating to new and intending publishers as well as exacerbate the imbalances of impact between upcoming and established journals, thereby, possibly, opening the door to monopolistic tendencies in the industry [44].

Simplistically, supposing that an author, who is amenable to multiple submission and journal-tiering, simultaneously submits an article to two or three relevant but different journals that complete reviews in 90 days, and at the end of the peer-review process, two of the journals accept to publish the manuscript, does the author double-publish or withdraw the manuscript? And should the author choose one of the journals, how will the input of the other (rejected) journal(s) be reckoned? So, assuming that the aim of agitating for the abandonment of the single-submission rule is to reward the productivity of authors as quickly as possible, as has been claimed [1,2,3,4], how does one, in equity, appreciate the resources and time expended by the journals (and reviewers) rejected by the author(s) after a rigorous peer-review process? Regardless, it is cogent to describe the simultaneous submission of an article to more than one journal as a poor and unsustainable management of scarce human resources and assert that, comparatively, these same resources could yield two or more different papers, under the prevailing single-submission policy. Additionally, there are knotty ethical issues around copyright ownership ex-Open Access, amongst others [32,39,45], with simultaneous, multiple submissions [46].

Moreover, the suggestion that multiple submissions are not unethical and are different from duplicate publications, which are considered unethical [4,16], is moot because the latter is consequent upon the former. Aside the ancillary resources, wastages and drawbacks inherent in multiple submissions, including retractions, single submission leaves no room for redundant publications [46], except in the case of premeditated deceit. Consequently, it is virtually impossible to rule out underhandedness, under the single-submission rule, when an author(s) “unknowingly” publishes the same material (manuscript) more than once.

In conclusion, the single-submission policy, like most human contrivances, may be considered suboptimal or quixotic but it is the best we have got now, and it suffices. It is, to a large extent, a foolproof and rigorous throughput method of ensuring quality, probity and accountability as well as of discouraging duplicity [6,47]. Significantly, most of the issues raised in support of lifting the multiple-submission ban are already replete with pragmatic solutions, some of which have been adduced [2,3], though antidotes are yet to be prescribed for the looming chaos in the event that the single-submission rule is abolished [4]. A plausible avant-garde would be to require editorial boards to share information on manuscripts received but this is probably dead-on-arrival—with a few exceptions [39,45,48]—as publishers competing for patronage from prospective authors are unlikely to acquiesce. In my assessment, therefore, the points in support of the status quo dwarf those against.

The system of single-submission works; the “team” is still winning! Why change it?