Q: Can I resubmit my manuscript that was published in a journal that is no longer available?

It’s unfortunate that your published article is now ‘lost.’ In case you haven’t done so already, you may consider looking up Internet Archive (using the URL or keywords for your article) and International DOI Foundation (using the digital object identifier of your article). To avoid this scenario for future articles, you may also consider uploading your manuscript to a preprint repository. That way, even if the journal site is no longer available, your original article would still be available on the preprint site. (Apart from this, preprints offer several advantages, which you may learn about here: The role of preprints in research dissemination)

Note also that it’s not necessary that the ‘missing’ journal was a predatory journal. It may have been a new journal that was yet to establish itself and had to end operations due to a lack of funding. For future reference, you may keep handy this checklist for identifying predatory journals: 10 Point checklist to identify predatory publishers

In ordinary circumstances, we would have advised you not to send the article to a new journal. This is for the following reasons.

• It would have been a case of duplicate publication if the earlier site were still available.
• If the site had been a predatory journal, referring to this action (whether through sharing it with a new journal or by mentioning it in your list of publications) would not reflect favorably on your academic credentials.
• Journals typically do not prefer publishing already published articles, whether on a genuine site or a predatory one, even if the site is no longer available.

Having said that, as this is a slightly different situation, here are a few things you could do.

• Check the copyright transfer form. Check if the copyright transfer form for your article is still available on the net. Also, check the details in your copy of the form (in case you still have it) to know if the form states anything about the status of the copyright in such a scenario.
• Send a query with details to a new target journal. If you wish to submit the article to a new journal, you should send them a presubmission inquiry with all the details of the situation and see what they have to say about this.
• Mention the article on your resume/site. In case no journal is keen to publish the article, you could simply leave it at mentioning it on your resume or site (if you have one), with a note such as ‘site no longer exists.’ Although this may not be ideal, this ensures you have captured the publishing of the article in some way at least.

You would need to think through the above and decide your next step. And of course, keep in mind the points shared earlier to avoid such a situation in the future.

Finally, here are a couple of queries by other users that you may find useful.

• Can I submit a modified version of an already submitted paper to a new journal?
• Can I submit an accepted paper from a predatory to a reputable journal without a confirmation of withdrawal?