Q: Is it a problem to withdraw a manuscript that has received a major revision decision?
Is there any problem to withdraw the manuscript decided as “Major revision” and submit it to another journal? According to the decision letter, resubmission was suggested if I could follow all the comments. I think I can follow most of them, but I want to submit the manuscript to another journal. In that case, what should I mention in the cover letter?
If you can address most of the comments suggested by reviewers, I'm not sure why you would want to submit your paper to another journal. Ideally, withdrawing a paper from a journal after peer review is not considered a good practice as the reviewers have spent so much of their valuable time on reviewing the paper. Unless you have a very strong reason for rejection, you should ideally not be doing this. Moreover, the second journal might take a long time to process your paper and in case you receive a rejection, you will end up wasting more time.
However, if you strongly feel you want to withdraw your paper, you can send a withdrawal request to the journal. However, be careful not to submit your paper to another journal before you receive a confirmation of withdrawal; else, you might be accused of duplicate submission.
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This content belongs to the Journal submission & peer review Stage