Parallel Paper Submission

[John F. Kolen]

Parallel submission offers the author the illusion of saving time and energy by
increasing the probability of acceptance with minimal revisions.  In my
experience as an AE, very few papers are accepted as-is on the first attempt.
Flat out rejects were just as rare.  Revise and resubmit was the most
frequent. Upon resubmission, papers were accepted either as-is or with
minor-corrections.

Now consider what happens with parallel submission.  Essentially, more people
look at your paper.  Most quality reviews will identify the same deficiencies
in the reviewed paper.  So rather than have two or three people pointing out
your mistakes, you've got five or six...and a couple of journals telling you to
revise and resubmit.  And it's still a two-step process.

Most, if not all, of the suggestions on this thread have made the same
assumption.  That is, all that matters for acceptance is quality of the paper.
This is not the case, especially in a field as diverse as ours.  For any two
journals, the review critera are different.  Journals have target audiences
that have certain expectations.  Some audiences expect excruciatingly thorough
background sections, while others are happy with the formulas and a minimal
amount of window dressing.  Thus, multiple submissions should entail additional
work for each submission to tailor it to the target audience.  This assumes,
of course, that the author cares about such matters and does not perceive 
the publication as merely 'a line on the vita'. 

Finally, if you think that the reviews are unfair, discuss it with the editor.
If you think the turnaround time is too long, get involved in the review
process and write quality reviews with a quick turnaround.  There always seems
to be more papers than reviewers.
 

-- 
John F. Kolen				  voice: 850.202.4420 
Research Scientist			  fax:   850.202.4440 
Institute for Human and Machine Cognition 
University of West Florida