Should multiple submissions become the norm in journals?

© Malhar N. Kumar 2014 Most journals require the author to submit a signed declaration at the time of submission that the manuscript has not been submitted elsewhere for review.1 Multiple submissions are considered unethical because they lead to wastage of journal resources in terms of editorial peer review. In addition, they may lead to disagreements between publishers over rights to publish.2 Thus, the ethics behind the demand for unique submission are well founded. However, an ethical dilemma arises when journals show lack of respect for the time and efforts of the author. If a submission is accepted for peer review by a journal and the review process becomes needlessly prolonged, valuable time of the author is wasted. A survey showed that nearly 40% of authors were dissatisfi ed with the time taken for peer review.3 Procrastination of decision-making in the review process has not received the attention it deserves. In traditional peer review, the author has no control over the proceedings (except appealing against rejection or retracting the manuscript from the journal). In this context, it can be argued that multiple submissions should be permitted to make the review process a level playing fi eld for authors. Multiple submissions refer to submission of the same manuscript by the same author(s) to two or more journals simultaneously.4 A traditionalist might immediately question the ethics of multiple submissions. It is essential to understand the difference between multiple submission and duplicate (redundant) publication. The latter is generally accepted as unethical since it is wasteful of review efforts of the concerned journals and burdens the scientifi c literature with redundant data. ‘Multiple submissions’ differ from duplicate publication in that publication is limited to a single journal in the event of acceptance of the manuscript.