Submitting another paper to a journal after rejection?

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

an editor suggested me to not succesively send papers to one journal and to wait for (at least) a few months before submitting another paper. Is this the norm in most journals? (I am new to the game and trying to make sure that I know the rules which are not indicated in the instructions) Thanks so much.

Some journals have explicit policies about this, but I don't know if beyond this there are any unspoken norms. 

What do readers think?

Comments

[an editor]

If the editor said do not send another paper in for a while, then I would not do it. Whether they have a formal policy stated explicitly or not, the journal may not want to review so many of a person's papers in short sequence. I assume the papers are being rejected - and no journal wants more papers to reject.

[Michel]

That seems like the considerate thing to do to me. Except that I'd do the same for other verdicts, as well.

[triple anon]

My advice to the OP, if their preferred style is to send their various papers to one specific place as a first destination, is to pick a place that is triple-anonymous.

[lopi]

I had a similar experience. I was not aware of the policy of the journal (it is not stated in the guidelines - otherwise I would not of course have sent my paper!) Anyway, I had to wait for (I think it was around) two months to hear that the editor did not send my paper for a review (because they had reviewed another paper of mine couple months ago). Huh! If a journal has such a policy I think they should explicitly state it. Otherwise it becomes a (even more) draining experience.

[Daniel Weltman]

I've almost always waited at least a year or two between consecutive submissions to each journal but I've also always wondered how many other people do this and how long they wait. (You can see me wondering this a year and two months ago: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2023/07/submitting-another-paper-to-a-journal-just-after-rejection.html) Partially this was motivated by thinking I should wait some amount of time and partially it was motivated by wanting to not submit much more than I'm reviewing, and I don't get asked to review very often.

Recently (as in like two days ago or something) I've decided that my backlog of papers I want to publish is too long and I'm tired of holding back so much, so now I'm going to submit more often. Perhaps all along I ought to have been doing that.

[Overseas Tenured]

I honor the written guidelines of every journal, but nothing beyond that - if they don't limit the number of submissions per year, I feel free to send them as many as I please.

(Also, some journals are very slow, so submitting a paper immediately after getting another one rejected often means that you still don't submit there more than around once a year.)

[no rush]

The policy I know is to wait 6 months after the submission date of a paper being rejected. But if the rejection comes at or after 6 months, then I would still wait a bit (a month or two) until the next submission.

Some speculation: maybe, just maybe, the editor told you to wait instead of simply sitting on it because they have briefly skimmed the paper and thought it could still use some improving
(This speculation would not hold at all if there is an official policy of some sort, of course.)