Q: If I publish the contents of my conference presentation first as a feature article and then as a journal article, would it be a case of duplicate submission?

Detailed Question -

I was requested by a magazine to write a feature article. They are going to publish the contents of my conference presentation as an article. Meanwhile, I am planning to submit a manuscript to a peer-reviewed journal. If my writing is published in the magazine, would my manuscript submission be considered a case of duplicate submission?

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

To begin, what you are planning on doing here is a bit unusual. Most researchers progress as follows:

Conference presentation > Manuscript publication > Research communication

That is, at a conference presentation, they present preliminary findings of research they are working on. Based on the feedback received at the conference, they may make changes and then write and submit the research paper to a scientific journal. Once the paper is accepted and published, they seek to communicate their research to the public through general publications.

What you are doing, or planning to do, is as follows:

Conference presentation > Research communication > Manuscript publication

You are planning to publish the contents of your conference presentation as a magazine article, which should qualify as ‘research communication.’ After that, or along with that, you are planning to submit a manuscript based on the presentation. Given how long the scientific publication process can last, the research communication will happen before the research publication!

Apart from being odd, this would compromise research and publication integrity, as you would be communicating your research before it has been verified through the process of a peer review. In which case, unverified findings may get communicated to the lay public, which can be an undesirable (if not risky) proposition.

Also, it’s not clear what exactly the magazine article will contain. Will it contain the verbatim (exact) version of your conference presentation? Or will the text be new writing? If you plan to write new text for the journal (distinct from the conference text) but keep the same text for the manuscript, this would be a case of self-plagiarizing (rather than duplicate submission), as the magazine article would probably already be published by then.

As a side note, it’s interesting how the idea of first publishing the magazine article came about. Perhaps someone from the magazine approached you at the conference or after reading about your presentation and asked you to submit an article.

Anyway, as you can see, there are multiple issues here. To avoid these, here is what we would suggest.

  • It would be best to have the magazine (feature) article published after the journal article. In that case, you may wish to ask the magazine editor to hold on to the piece until the journal article is published. In such a case, you may also say that you will submit a new piece later based on the journal article.
  • In case it’s not possible to hold on to the magazine article, check this with the journal editor before sending your manuscript. You will also need to inform them that the manuscript is originally based on the conference presentation. You can proceed based on what they advise. In case they say that once the magazine article is published, it’s not possible to submit to a journal, you may then decide on going first with the journal and then the magazine (as is the usual case).

Hope that helps.

For more information on the various points discussed above, you may refer to the following resources:

All the best on deciding how to proceed!

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