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Consider the scenario where an author sends his paper to Journal A. Journal A then sends the paper to reviewer X and the reviewer rejects the papers. After rejection, the author send his paper to Journal B. Journal B then sends this paper to reviewer X.

Does this ever happen? What does the reviewer do in this case?

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MrDi
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    A related, and possible duplicate, question http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7200/asked-again-to-review-a-paper-when-the-authors-dont-wish-to-modify-it – StrongBad Sep 03 '15 at 15:38
  • Yep: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/197156/should-i-agree-to-review-a-paper-that-ive-already-recommended-that-another-jour – Solomon Ucko Jun 16 '23 at 04:08

3 Answers3

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It happens all the time. I think it is the reviewer's responsibility to respond to the editor saying that he or she has already seen the paper. Then it's the editor's call. Ideally the paper would be sent to a new reviewer, but depending on the subject of the paper the pool of available referees might be small enough that the editor requests the reviewer to reread the paper anyway.

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    "Ideally the paper would be sent to a new reviewer" - I disagree. Either, the author has revised the paper. In that case, the reviewer could reasonably be asked to review the new version of the paper again. Or nothing about the paper has changed. In that case, the reviewer should indeed respond to the editor, and ideally, the editor would desk-reject the paper for attempted journal-shopping. – O. R. Mapper Sep 03 '15 at 13:35
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    @O.R.Mapper If I were a referee asked to reread a paper I had already seen, then I would definitely prefer the paper to go to somebody else. I've given my judgment already, and the author deserves an attempt to persuade the broad scholarly community of his or her thesis. Maybe I just have some personal hangups with the paper. I would try my best to avoid making such gut decisions, of course, but it seems unfair to the author to perhaps have the bad luck to keep getting such a blinkered referee as me who cannot see the obvious quality of the paper! –  Sep 03 '15 at 13:38
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    Also I am not too worried about the "journal shopping" problem. It is clear from the OPs comments that we aren't talking about double submitting the same paper to multiple journals concurrently. OP is talking about what to do after one journal has already passed and the author has sent the paper to a second. There is nothing wrong with resubmitting work to a new journal once another journal has rejected it. (Otherwise almost nobody would ever publish anything.) –  Sep 03 '15 at 13:39
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    As I said, if the author has made any changes to the paper, you haven't seen that (version of the) paper yet. If the author has not made any changes, I think it is quite unethical to try and send the unmodified paper to another venue. Chances are there is something fundamentally wrong with the paper, in which case the author is trying to circumvent the review process by probing until they find sloppy enough reviewers who happen to let the manuscript pass, while at the same time wasting several reviewers' time. The only exception might be if the rejection is based on the conclusion that ... – O. R. Mapper Sep 03 '15 at 13:44
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    ... the work is indeed relevant and of high enough quality, but just fits a lot better at another venue. To make this explicit: I do not see any difference between submitting manuscript X to several journals simultaneously and submitting the very same manuscript X to several journals sequentially. – O. R. Mapper Sep 03 '15 at 13:45
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    @O. R. Mapper: sending a paper to a different journal after one journal rejects it is not clearly "journal shopping". Sometimes, if you disagree with a referee, the best thing to do is to just submit the paper somewhere else! There are many times when papers are rejected but there is nothing "fundamentally wrong" with the paper. I remember once I had a reviewer reject a paper from a journal where the paper would have been unusual - our approach wasn't the standard one for topology, and the reviewer didn't like it. We sent it unchanged to an arguably better journal, and it was published there. – Oswald Veblen Nov 23 '15 at 23:56
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    @OswaldVeblen Agreed. Sometimes a paper is also simply rejected with no meaningful feedback. I've seen papers rejected with a one sentence referee report like: "This paper should be rejected because it's thesis is false." Now admittedly, presumably what O. R. Mapper has in mind isn't that kind of irresponsible refereeing behavior, but some more substantive commentary from the referee. –  Nov 24 '15 at 00:01
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    @O.R.Mapper "and ideally, the editor would desk-reject the paper": that would be very far from ideal. One very common version of this situation is when Journal A is considerably more prestigious than Journal B. The same referee could easily recommend rejection in the former, and then acceptance in the latter, even if the paper has almost not changed. Your comments seem to suggest that if you get your paper rejected anywhere ever, you should burn it and never send it to another journals. That's just not how academia works. If you think that papers only get rejected because there is something... – Alex B. Apr 02 '19 at 11:20
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    ...fundamentally wrong with them, then you are thinking of the lowest tier of journals. In particular, your phrase "of high enough quality" does not have any absolute meaning. Only the phrase "of high enough quality for the journal at hand" might have a meaning, and it is this aspect that the reviewer is asked to comment on. Naturally, this may have different answers for different journals. – Alex B. Apr 02 '19 at 11:20
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When I, as a referee, see a paper that I've already reviewed, I just send the second journal the same report. Generally, minor changes are required, but I generally try to keep the report basically the same, so that the authors will know that the report came from the same referee. I can't say I have a particularly well-thought-out reason for doing this. However, I do think it serves to make clear that multiple editors have seen fit to pick somebody (that is, me) as an expert who is qualified to review the manuscript; the reports are not coming from people who were unqualified to referee the submission and should never have gotten it in the first place.

I do not inform the editor about this unless there is a specific reason. Since these situations pretty much always involve rejected manuscripts, the authors sometimes get angry in their response letters. If I feel that the authors have behaved inappropriately during the first round of submission, I might mention that to the second journal's editor. Similarly, if I rejected the paper the first time due to outright plagiarism, I will mention that to the second editor as well. Whenever I have done this, it has been to give the editor a specific heads-up and there may be abnormal difficulties with the paper.

I am also more likely to recommend outright rejection by the second journal if I recommended major revisions at the first. If the authors were unwilling to make the revisions to get the article published in the first journal, it's probably wasting people's time to suggest publication may be possible after the same revisions the second time around. Once, I had to recommend rejection of a paper at the first journal even though the authors had made useful changes. (They fixed one of the two serious problems but were unable to deal with the other.) When I got the paper to referee again at a second journal, they had reverted to their original version of the manuscript, with both problems present again. I was particularly unsympathetic in my report in that case, since the legitimate efforts I had made to help the authors improve their paper had evidently been tossed away. (I think I informed the editor in that case as well, but I'm not certain.)

Buzz
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  • I think you should inform the other journal directly in your review. "Below I include a modified version of my review of this manuscript at a previous journal. Most of my comments were not addressed although issue X was corrected" This is actually important to the editor, it is valuable information. I am an editor of a journal and I would prefer if a reviewer disclosed this. But ultimately its up to you given you are giving your labour for free. – WetlabStudent Oct 20 '23 at 09:29
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This happens a fair amount in my field. Sometimes, it is even arranged. The author(s) tell Journal B that Journal A rejected the paper, and the editor at Journal B asks the editor at Journal A who Reviewer X was so that they can use the same Reviewer. Of course the authors are not stupid; this only happens when the paper was originally rejected solely for not being good enough for Journal A and Journal B is a less prestigious journal.

It is good to let the editor know (if he or she does not know already), but generally, having reviewed the paper before is a good thing. It means that you can submit a report quickly rather than taking 6 months or a year.

Alexander Woo
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