I was asked to review a technical paper for a journal at a large commercial publisher. The paper extends on another publication that is cited several times throughout the document. The cited paper was published at the same publisher but in a different journal. I work for an R&amp;D department in a private company. We do not have a subscription with the publisher and no budget to buy articles (at least not in cases like this). I.e., I cannot access the cited paper. Would it be acceptable to ask the editor of the journal I review for to provide me with the cited paper?  Additional Information: The review process is double blind, so I do not know if the cited paper and the paper I'm reviewing are from the same authors. Given the specific topic, it seems likely to me. This is why I did not ask the authors for a copy. I was also unable to find a free version of the paper online.  Outcome: I asked the editor for the paper and received a copy within hours. Along with ads for a subscription of that journal.
122880
If you review a paper which relies on results some other paper and you do not have access to that paper, is it acceptable to contact the editor and ask whether the author can provide a copy of the referenced paper? Are requests like this reasonably common?  Or should the referee simply take the word of authors that their conclusions based on the referenced paper are correct, even without seeing that paper?
21933
Suppose some author provides his original research article to a journal for publication. In this way, he is disclosing or revealing his confidential research work to that journal. Now, consider the case that his article gets rejected. So, is it not possible that whoever reviews that article can publish that kind of work and say that it's theirs? Since the original author's work has not been published and he is disclosing his confidential work to somebody, how could the author get assurance that if his article is rejected, his work will not be leaked by the journal staff in any form? What happens if this kind of thing happens?
106591
A few months ago, I submitted a manuscript. After the reviews were completed I received a rejection decision from the Associate Editor (AE). The rejection was based on the basis of a single rejection recommendation by one of the four reviewers. The journal has very high standards so this is not uncommon. However, the reason for the rejection appears really awkward to me. The reviewer wrote in his/her report that another paper with a similar idea was submitted (not published) in another journal. He/she wrote that the submission date of the other paper was earlier than mine so the originality of my idea is questionable. The AE agreed with this report and adopted this argument in the rejection letter.    I want to emphasize that my results were independently developed and I have no knowledge whatsoever of the other manuscript which according to the reports that were attached has not been published yet. The whole situation seems rather awkward and I am not sure how to react. Of course the reviewer's identity is not known to me, but I find it hard to believe that he/she is not an author or somehow related to the author of the other paper.   Furthermore, I feel really offended by these comments  as it appears to me that I am implicitly being accused of plagiarism. I am considering writing a letter to the Editor in Chief. I do not want to change the decision, but I would like to make clear that my results were independently obtained. Also, what are your thoughts on how should I proceed with my manuscript?
46577
Finding the citations of any particular paper is straightforward.   But how do you identify the set of publications that cite two specific papers?  The reason I am asking this is because I am trying to write a review article to resolve an issue in the literature. There are 2 papers that adopt opposite views regarding that issue. To check if any similar study to mine has been attempted before, I am trying to look for any papers that cited those 2 papers together. Any way to do this?   Each paper has hundreds of citations, so looking for common citation is not practical!
109308
While writing the literature review for my paper, I found another paper which is closely related to my research. Unfortunately, the paper’s publisher is on . Hence, I wonder if citing the paper will have any negative impact on my paper.
78436
I have submitted an article for a journal in which it was stated that the review time was from 80 to 120 days, that is approximately 4 months at most. The submission of my article was approximately 13 months ago and I did not get any answer in the allotted time they mentioned. I sent an email to the editor after 8 months and I was told that the review process has suffered a delay, but that they soon will fix that issue.  I waited until September and sent another email and again I got another reply of an apology and nothing more. I believe that it has passed too much time, until now it is almost like one year, so I do not what to do.  Would there be any problem if I submit my article to another journal or should I send another email to the editor of this journal? Or rather just wait until I get a response?
113618
If an article, theorem, etc. is unpublished, presumably the work is only available to people who track down the author and get a draft copy. Today we have arXiv and can find many preprints on the Internet, but people have been citing unpublished works longer than arXiv has been around. It seems like an unscrupulous author could claim anything he wants, cite an unpublished work that doesn't support his claim (or even one that doesn't exist), and get away with it unless the bad claim is caught in the review process.  I suppose the reviewers could ask for a copy of the cited work, but I recently saw a citation that was just "private communication 1981" for a paper published in 1985, and that could easily have been a phone call where no record could be provided to a reviewer.  I've never published anything myself, so maybe I'm unaware of a part of the review process that is meant to catch this, but what prevents authors from making bad citations of unpublished works?
56789
I recently reviewed a paper (general applied mathematics context). During the review, I realized that the fairly general ideas introduced in the paper can potentially be applied to a specific problem in a similar context. The authors did not mention this application in their paper, so I suggested to add a short comment about it in my review.  I later started thinking about the application in more detail and tried out some things, which actually seem to work quite well for this application. Now, the paper is still in the review process and might take some time until it gets published. What is the proper way how to proceed here in order to use the ideas and results which I in my exclusive position as a reviewer saw? How can I refer to the paper that is still under review? How can I best discuss the ideas with my co-workers (and potential co-authors) without disclosing that I reviewed the paper?  The paper under review is not available online on any preprint servers such as arXiv etc
120212
Recently, I wrote an article, and I'm trying to submit it somewhere, but two journals told me that my article is plagiarized even up to 70%!    I'm 100% sure that it's not plagiarized because I wrote it by myself. The only thing that I suspect caused this problem is that I posted the pre-print online in ECSarxiv, and I think they found my pre-print and think my paper is plagiarized! My name on the pre-print is exactly the same as in the submitted paper. I checked the pre-print policy of these journals, and they clearly stated that they don't have a problem with pre-prints. I checked it with Turnitin, and it says there is no plagiarism in my article. I also searched the Internet for random sentences from my article and it just shows my pre-print. I complained after I received the rejection, pointed out to my pre-print, and asked them to name the paper I allegedly plagiarized from. However, they did not respond back to me. I now sent an email to editor-in-chief and I'm waiting for response. I am confident that the journals are reputable (Elsevier and Springer).   Any ideas or suggestions?
4104
I submitted to a journal a couple of months ago. The editorial flow is somehow quick and very transparent. I receive notifications for all events happening to the manuscript.  Unfortunately, the managing editor contacted me three weeks ago. They informed me that the assigned editor could not commit to the job and left. Another editor was immediately assigned.  However, I was contacted today by the new assigned editor. I was informed that all the contacted reviewers so far either refused to review the manuscript or did not respond to the invitation. They are now looking for other reviewers.  Despite the bad luck surrounding the manuscript, all of this happened in a reasonable time and I am satisfied with how quickly they react.  Nevertheless, these events made me reflect. Even if an editorial board possesses a fair network of reviewers, there is still a little risk that all the contacted reviewers either refuse or do not reply.  What happens if no reviewers could be found for a submitted manuscript? Is the journal going to reject the manuscript because of a lack of reviewers?
35952
Financial terms, content quality, etc, is not a problem. The author has a contribution that will significantly impact the advancement of human knowledge about a particular topic.  Can anyone submit a paper? Or does it require some affiliation with a larger group such as an educational/governmental/corporate institution?  I am talking about journals of such clout as the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, etc.
50619
I'd just submitted a manuscript to  Journal on Mar. 1st, 2015. Right after 1 month, its status changed to Under Review. I just waited up to Jan. 2016 and send a letter to editor-in-chief to clear the status of the paper and any potential problem due to this delay. He did say this after that 10 months!:     you are right with your criticism. However your paper deals with   research topics, where only a few of roboticist are familiar with.   Hopefully we can get now the final required review. Sorry for the   inconvenience.   Now, 2 extra months are passed, yet the paper's status is still Under Review.  They should have considered responsibility regarding the case. They could easily announce us about their inability to find any interested reviewer for the manuscript, and we would find the other journal. I'm frustrated a little bit. As a matter of fact, I am reluctant to withdraw the submission as they have wasted my time, NOTICEABLY, over the last year. I wonder if they have completely neglected it.   Is there any way to handle this case, and ask them POLITELY and REASONABLY, leading to the finalization of this manuscript's situation?  Thanks  Edit: After 2 weeks from sending an email to the editor about the manuscript, he has not still replied.
111924
About 3 months ago, my co-author and I submitted a mathematical paper to a journal. Yesterday, we got the editor's response and the paper has been rejected. The reason is that the referee thinks that our results are wrong or trivial.  However, we carefully read the referee's report and we conclude that the "errors" pointed out by the referee are not errors at all and that our proofs are correct. In all modesty, we think that the referee understood very poorly even the statements of our theorems.  Personally, this is the first time that such a situation occurs to me. I already have four papers published in such journal and the reports I got from the referees have been always really accurate.  What do you think is the best thing to do? Forget about and try another journal? Write an e-mail to the editor explaining why we disagree with the decision? Other ideas?  EDIT: Thank you very much for all your answers. At the end, we submitted our paper to another journal with only some slight edits we have already planned to do independently by the referee's report.
7402
. While the reasons for his doing this are not yet public, this is a real loss of a valuable service. Does anyone know of similar services available to the general public?  Edit:  is definitely relevant, but that approach is more appropriate for finding top journals rather than identifying bottom ones. I.e., following that method would probably exclude lots of valid, lower-tier journals. Are there any approaches to easily identifying a predatory publisher?
101672
I've recently submitted three papers to the same top journal over a period of two weeks. Can this fact alone impact on the chances of any of the papers being accepted? There is no overlap of content or dependencies among the papers, but I'm a bit worried that it may look odd from the editor's perspective and raise doubts on my work.
53853
I submitted a manuscript last year to an IEEE journal, and the paper was accepted for publication. I recently submitted a new manuscript to the same journal, but, this time, the paper was rejected, and I was told that I should submit to another journal since my paper was not within the journal's scope. The two papers both target similar applications. Furthermore, the second paper uses some work in the first paper, making substantial improvements at solving a much more difficult problem. Based on the reviewer's comments (and my own personal assessment), I do not believe that the work presented in the second paper was "incremental" in nature. Far from it. Two of the three reviewers gave positive reviews. The third reviewer, however, mentioned the "outside of journal's scope" issue and the associate editor and editor-in-chief both sided with the 3rd reviewer, and the paper was stopped dead in its tracks.  I'm scratching my head trying to come to terms with how in the world my first paper could be accepted by this journal, but the second paper focused on the same application space and achieving substantial improvements on a much more difficult problem (backed up with measured results) could be rejected. Any ideas?
91655
Well the question is pretty much self contained :  Can you cite articles if you only read the abstract ?  In a more general case :  1) Do reviewers actually read (or read) articles you cite ?  2) If the abstract is well structured, and you flied through the article content, everything seems reliable, and you do not need to have a thorough understanding of the methods for example, is it ok to cite it ?  EDIT : following O.R Mapper insightful comment  3) What if you cannot access the paper in no way ?