Submitting another paper to a journal just after rejection?

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

A paper of mine has been recently rejected from a journal. I have another paper that deals with a topic in the same sub-field. Would it be against me to submit that paper to the same journal that just rejected my other paper? I want to submit to that journal because it has a fast response time but would like to know whether it'd be ill-advised or not.

I have to confess that I've often wondered about this too. Generally speaking, I try to send papers to different journals--but on occasions I've sent a paper to a journal that recently rejected a paper of mine because it seemed like a good fit and had a reputation for good turnaround times. However, I've always sort of wondered whether editors frown on it. I do know that some journals have explicit policies, for example that they will only consider one paper by a given author in a given calendar year. But what about other journals that don't have policies like these?

What do you all think?

Comments

[Michel]

I think it's fine to do this occasionally, though I'd not make a habit of doing it regularly.

[Postdoc]

Perhaps I'm shameless, but I don't see anything wrong with this unless it's against journal policy. If that's the best journal to submit your paper to right now, I say do it.

[Daniel Weltman]

I usually wait at least a year before submitting a paper to a journal after getting a verdict from that journal on one of my other papers. But I also wonder if I should bother doing this, so my behavior shouldn't really be taken as an indication of what I think certainly ought to be done or what I take the norm to be, insofar as there is a norm.

[Tim]

I'm not an editor, but as an author my rule of thumb is this: do not average more than 1 submission to the same journal per year. Sometimes I have submitted twice in the same year, but then I hadn't submitted to that journal in a little bit. I once sent a note to an editor saying that the paper was the third paper submitted to the journal on the same topic in the last four years, and I would understand if it was rejected for that reason. I think that's also an option if one is particularly worried about it.

[Anonymous]

Whatever one does I think one should be careful not to inundate journals with submissions. For myself I don't send more than one paper to a journal in a year but that's because I don't submit tons of stuff and spend time developing my individual papers before submitting them. Also I think that there's too much stuff being submitted often and as a community we should be mindful of the impact this can have on journals and others.

[MindLang]

I’m truly baffled by some of the comments above.

There’s nothing wrong with sending a different paper to a journal that recently rejected a previous paper, if the journal allows that. If they didn’t want that to happen, they’d prohibit it.

In fact, I think this is often inevitable for those of us who write at least two papers a year. Consider: Phil Review and Mind limit you to one submission per year, Australasian limits to two submissions per year, and Nous and PPR are only open late fall to early spring. So journals like Phil Imprint, Phil Studies, Synthese, and Phil Quarterly are going to get back-to-back submissions occasionally.

I’ve done this plenty of times, and it has never seemed to negatively impact my publication success.

People clearly set all sorts of rules for themselves about this, and apparently want this behavior to be normed. But my advice is to have the professional career *you* want to have. (To me, the thought of limiting myself to one submission a year sounds completely miserable.)

[FellowMindLang]

@MindLang

Yes, we all know that the only journals in the profession are Phil Review, Mind, and Nous. Personally I have at least 7 Mind-worthy papers in submission in any given year so back-to-back submissions are inevitable.