While doing a literature review earlier this spring, a human factors researcher came across a paper he had peer-reviewed. One problem: He had reviewed it – and recommended against publishing – for a different journal not long before the publication date of the paper he was now looking at.
Based on the published paper and documents shared with us, it appears the authors submitted the same manuscript to the journals Applied Sciences and Virtual Reality within 11 days of each other, and withdrew one version when the other was published.
And after we reached out to the authors, the lead author told us they plan to withdraw the published version next week – which the editor of the journal had called for in April but its publisher, MDPI, had not yet decided to do.
The journal Applied Sciences published the paper, “Correlations between SSQ Scores and ECG Data during Virtual Reality Walking by Display Type,” on March 4, 2024.
Both the first author of the paper, Mi-Hyun Choi, and the senior author, Jin Seung Choi, are professors at Konkuk University in Seoul, South Korea.
The reviewer, who asked us to remain anonymous, received the manuscript from editors at Virtual Reality on January 22. That manuscript had a submission date of January 2, less than two weeks before the authors submitted it to Applied Sciences.
“I reviewed this human-subject study and noticed, curiously, that there was no ethics statement on the paper detailing whether there had been any ethics approval,” he said, noting at the time he raised these concerns to the editor in chief of Virtual Reality.
In the published version, the authors state the protocol was approved by the university’s Institutional Review Committee.
In the review report we saw, the reviewer wrote the manuscript couldn’t be published in its current form because it didn’t properly cite prior research on the topic, lacked a novel thesis and lacked statistical rigor.
“In isolation, each of these omissions could warrant a minor revision, however, the manuscript is quite scant on detail and unfortunately reads more like a conference paper or a short-and-sweet-paper,” he wrote on Jan. 23, 2024.
But after he raised these concerns to the editor-in-chief, he didn’t see the paper again, he told us. Then, he was informed the authors withdrew it from consideration on March 5 — the day after, it turns out, Applied Sciences published its version.
In emails we have seen from this April, the reviewer brought the dual submission to the attention of both journals. In response, Rob Macredie, the editor-in-chief for Virtual Reality, noted the authors stated in their cover letter to the journal that the paper was “currently not under review, nor it will [sic] be submitted to another journal while under consideration for Virtual Reality.”
Later that month, Giulio Cerulo, the editor in chief of Applied Sciences, told the reviewer the double submission was a “clear violation of the ethical standards and, in my opinion, it should lead to a retraction of the published article.”
But when we followed up with Applied Sciences, an MDPI title, they said they were still investigating the paper. Jisuk Kang, the publishing manager at MDPI, said in an email the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) “retraction guidelines do not support the retraction of a published article based solely on dual submission, if the integrity of the data remains intact.” Kang noted the journal was still reviewing the paper and if the investigation uncovered misconduct, “further action will be taken as appropriate.”
COPE considers dual and multiple submissions “unethical practices in academic publishing,” but the organization doesn’t recommend a course of action once the papers are already published.
For a similar case submitted to COPE, the members said the organization would “always advocate educational rather than punitive action” and suggested editors publish an editorial “on the ethics of dual submissions.”
Jin Seung Choi first told us earlier this month the dual submission was “not appropriate,” and he said it was a “simple oversight” by the authors. He also said he would not support the retraction of the paper, as it contains “no plagiarism, misconduct, or issues concerning research originality.”
“Although it was my mistake, I think it would not have happened if the submission system had been able to recognize in advance that it was under review by another journal,” he told us.
After we followed up to confirm his affiliation this week, Jin Seung Choi told us he would withdraw the paper after meeting with his co-authors next week. “I do not want the problem to spread any further,” he wrote.
The reviewer told us he suspected “the authors either misrepresented themselves or acted maliciously” and were familiar with the submission process for journals.
The paper has been cited once by a paper in the same journal, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
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I believe it is ethically wrong to submit the same article to two journals at the same time. However, I am strongly against retracting the article for this reason, as retraction should be based on the content of the manuscript, not on how it was submitted.
What is the role of COPE when publishers pay them fees to get the membership. Is this not a conflict of interest alone? COPE does not have any authority.
MDPI is a very interesting publisher in terms of selecting Editors and adhering to the Ethics norms; There is a recent post by “For Better Science” about one of the journals named “energies” and its editors-in-chief, threatening the whistleblower.
https://forbetterscience.com/2025/05/06/the-perfect-mdpi-editor/
After a whistleblower alert, instead of retraction, the publisher changed the guest editor’s name to someone else to remove any trace of author-reviewer conflict of interest for the articles.
The Editor in Chief, Sciubba, even said this about “Retraction Watch”:
“To believe what Retraction Watch writes, at least on MDPI, is almost at the same level of believing that the 1989 Tien-an-Men massacre was just a peaceful confrontation and/or that Alexei Navalny committed suicide because he was getting bored in his Siberian quarters…“
Let’s ignore this particular paper and any methodological/specific issues per se, and think about submitting the same manuscript to two journals at the same time.
It is currently considered “misconduct” but why – the only reason is to save editorial/peer review time. BUT the problem is that the publication process is so slow, and there is such a power imbalance, I for one am becoming sympathetic to the idea especially when people’s careers are on the line because journals take six months or worse to deal with a manuscript despite charging exorbitant fees.
Perhaps it is time to fight back and start teaching journals that are essentially parasitic on researcher’s time and efforts a lesson?
I too am sympathetic, but this is one of those circumstances where everyone loses. More reviews mean more time spent reviewing less time doing actual research, and/or an ever increasing backlog of reviews and increasingly reluctant reviewers.
More constructive perhaps to organise a strike on unpaid reviewing?
The whole peer review system is unfit. Capitalism has wrecked science, I agree.
However, the main issue I think here is ethics. If, as a professor, you are able to submit a paper without ethics statement/acknowledgement, and then submit to two journals and disregard the ethics statement, how can we know you are not another Guėguen? Did you do the research?
Lot of good faith there.
Every journal that I ever interacted with asks that the author attest that the paper is not under consideration elsewhere (some even whether it previously was submitted elsewhere), so the authors most likely lied. If they lied on the double submission, why should we believe that they did not on getting approval by their IRB, actually performing the experiment, etc?
The scholarly community needs to be more mature in such cases. Some of its members still react childish with their peers. I do not see anything wrong to do a dual submission. The scholarly/scientific community should be open minded with dual submission. I believe its an authentic right for authors to submit their manuscripts to whomever they want. The academic community should grow up, and the current peer reviewing process must be revamped to uphold the authors rights
Issues with MDPI aside, at the end of the day academic publishers profit massively from the labour of academics that the publisher does not pay for. So is it really unethical to play these corporate entities off of each other? But okay if the reviewer raised the concern and the COPE guidelines say retraction is not necessary then I think the reviewer needs to get over themselves. Not really a Retraction Watch issue.
David Wilson has the right idea. Moreover, let authors submit the paper in a universal format. If accepted, then format it to the journal’s specification.
“Don’t waste reviewer’s time” just became an excuse for “waste author’s time instead” (which are the same people in the first place!)
I agree with Simon. Lately, the situation in some research areas is getting ridiculous. Journals have too much power and contribute too little in this whole system. For example, who pays for the time and effort required to submit an article to a particular journal? Just to be told months later that it won’t even be sent to the reviewers due to some arbitrary reason, and recommending to submit it to a partner open access journal (with exorbitant APC of course).
Moreover, each journal has its own formatting and other really picky details to complete before submitting, which consume authors time without any real gain for the research.
Add all this and you can end up with a lot of wasted time and effort with little to show for the research after a lot of time (not even reviewers suggestions).
Maybe it is time to start tilting the system in favor of the actual research.
Now you have people like Katus, that hear the name MDPI and automatically start calling wolf, without even focusing on the issue at hand. Maybe MDPI is subpar, but at least they don’t waste your time and give decisions “faster” in a couple of months (which people forget that used to be the case for Elsevier et al few years ago).
The reason for forbidding multiple submission is to protect reviewers. Consider the reviewer in this story. They carefully read and commented on the paper, but their work was entirely wasted because of the double submission.
Think about what will happen if each paper’s corresponding author is able to send it off to twenty journals at once. How will it get reviewed at *all*? There are already not enough people willing to do reviews; increase the workload by a factor of 20 and the system will fall apart. And there will be even fewer willing to do reviews once it’s known that 19 times out of 20 you are wasting your time.
But that problem occurs as well if the paper is just submitted to the next journal after being rejected. In order to save reviewers’ time, the reviews would need to be linked to the paper and it should be impossible to resubmit without the old reviews being seen by editors or new reviewers. As long as that isn’t the case, the waste is the same, at least for rejected papers, which get resubmitted.
Only in the case of a rejection. If the paper is accepted by both journals, it is wasted work just the same, and it would not have happened in a sequential submission
I’ve long believed that in research areas in which a limited number of quality journals compete for papers, authors should be able to submit a paper to more than one journal at the same time (with full disclosure to editors). The first editor to say “yes, this fits the aim and scope of my journal” is the only one that gets the initial independent review. The other editors would be notified that Journal A has agreed to put the paper into its review process and that they should not do anything with the paper.