Editorial pubs.acs.org/acscatalysis
Prior Submission to Alternate Journals Does Not Negatively Affect the Outcome of Submissions to ACS Catalysis Notes
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ast year, we clarified the journal’s policy regarding disclosure of prior submissions of a paper submitted for consideration in ACS Catalysis.1 Specifically, we stated that the submission of a paper, in whole or in part, to any journal (both ACS and nonACS) prior to submission to ACS Catalysis must be disclosed during the submission process. We also stated that the specific journal to which the paper was previously submitted could be disclosed or left undisclosed, at the authors’ discretion. In cases where papers were previously submitted to an ACS journal and that journal was identified, this enables the ACS Catalysis editor to obtain the prior reviews and potentially accelerate the peer review process. One concern that was voiced regarding this change was that some authors feared that disclosure of prior submission to another journal would negatively affect the outcome of their submission at ACS Catalysis. To this end, the journal has gathered data for the past six months to test this hypothesis. In the period from mid-September 2016, through mid-March 2017, ACS Catalysis received ∼1800 new submissions; of that total, over 350 new submissions had previously been submitted to other journals. The papers that had previously been submitted to another journal actually fared marginally better, on average, than papers that had never been submitted elsewhere. Thus, the data suggest a more favorable trend to what some authors feared, although the numbers are not drastically different. Specifically, if the average acceptance rate for all submissions to ACS Catalysis was X%, the acceptance rate for papers that were previously submitted elsewhere was 1.42X%. Moreover, if the rate of declination after editorial review for the journal’s overall submissions was Y%, the rate for papers that were previously submitted elsewhere was 0.82Y%. These data suggest that the papers submitted to ACS Catalysis after prior submission elsewhere are, on average, good papers. Submissions come to ACS Catalysis after prior submission to a variety of other journals, with ∼two thirds being submitted previously to another ACS Journal, and the remainder previously being submitted to journals of other publishers.2 The single most common locale for a prior submission is the Journal of the American Chemical Society, accounting for a significant fraction of all prior submissions. The most common non-ACS journal for a prior submission was Angewandte Chemie, International Edition. I hope these data relieve some authors’ anxiety about disclosing prior submissions. It remains mandatory at ACS Catalysis,1 but the above data suggest that such a disclosure will not, on average, have a negative effect on the potential for your paper to be published in ACS Catalysis.
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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REFERENCES
(1) Jones, C. W. ACS Catal. 2016, 6, 5587−5588. (2) Only a very small percentage of authors choose not to disclose where they had specifically submitted prior to ACS Catalysis.
Christopher W. Jones, Editor-in-Chief
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Georgia Institute of Technology
AUTHOR INFORMATION
ORCID
Christopher W. Jones: 0000-0003-3255-5791 © XXXX American Chemical Society
3049
DOI: 10.1021/acscatal.7b00984 ACS Catal. 2017, 7, 3049−3049
