The subsequent fate of rejected submissions is often unknown to journal publishers. But, with a third or more likely to end up being published elsewhere, understanding where those rejected articles end up provides valuable insights many publishers miss out on. To address this, we’ve added a new module to our PaperStack service.
This latest module allows editorial staff to track rejected articles to discover if, where, and when they are later published elsewhere. If the rejected article tracking module is enabled, all rejected articles are automatically searched in Crossref to identify if they are later published elsewhere, and if so when, in which journal, and with which publisher.
The lookup process has been tested and optimized in collaboration with Crossref, and performs at a rate of around 500 lookups per minute, so that even large backlogs of rejected articles can quickly be checked. The process also accounts for the fact that article titles or authors may have been amended since the original submission, with each match assigned a confidence score. Lookups are re-tried every few months following rejection, as it can sometimes take a year or more for articles to appear elsewhere.
This is particularly important where submissions end up with reputable competitor journals – might they instead have been transferred to an alternative journal within the publisher’s own portfolio? This can provide feedback which is crucial in the evaluation of peer review processes.
If you’d like to find out more about rejected article tracking and other insights that PaperStack can offer into your editorial processes, please get in touch for a chat and a demo.
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