It is very sad to hear that someone was banned from publishing in
many journals simply because he tried to send manuscript to two
journals at a time. As mentioned before, students send applications to more than one school
for admission, writes send their books to more than one publishers
for any chance of getting published, scientists send grant applications
to more than one granting agent for financial support, job finders send their resumes to
more than one company for interviews, ... The list can go on very long.
Itseems to me simply a current policy favored by some "scientists"
that are powerful enough to influence journals. I must say that the first
response I have when I herad someone sent his manuscript to more
than one journal simulaneously was that "he is cheating!" However,
now I think that it shouldn't be such as a bad behavior.
We should not confuse the one sending paper to more than one journal
and the ones that publish papers on more than one journal.
The latter is really a sin by any criteria at any time. But the former
behavior is quite common and should not receive such a severe
punishment. Isn't that something similar to what happened to churches
before when they burned or killed someone just for their irregular
behavior? I urge all the real scientists to stand up and ask the
journals to lift their ban on those victims of current opinion,
which might be a joke ten years from now.
Song-Muh Jong
University of Florida
sjj at icbr.ifas.ufl.edu
