Q: What should I do when I do not receive a response for a request to withdraw?

Detailed Question -

I submitted a manuscript to a SAGE journal. However, I made a request to withdraw it over one month ago, because I wanted to change the type of the manuscript to a technical note. I already sent an email three or four times to the journal, but I have not received a response yet. As I couldn’t wait for the response, I already submitted my manuscript to another journal. The manuscript status for the first journal is still before review, and for the second journal, I am presently working on the revision after review.

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

Thanks for describing your situation in such detail. As we always say, it’s easier to provide the right guidance when we have the right information. :-)

So, your decision to first withdraw from one journal and then to submit to another journal is understandable. However, your actions – two of them, specifically – aren’t entirely ethical or appropriate. But this could simply be because you weren’t aware of what you needed to do.

Here’s what you need/ed to do.

Firstly, you need to wait until one journal agrees to your request to withdraw. In case they don’t respond, like with the first journal, you need to write a final mail saying that you have tried contacting them lots of times about this, but as you haven’t heard from them so far, you are considering this as an approval of the withdrawal. Also, you need to save all these emails for future reference.

Then, when submitting to another journal, you need to inform them of the history with the previous journal. (If asked, you can provide the mails as reference.) The journal can then decide whether it’s okay for you to submit to them.

From your query, it doesn’t seem as if you have informed the second journal of this. If you have, that’s fine. If not, please do so immediately. There may be some repercussions to this, but it is the right way to proceed. Also, as suggested above, write a final mail to the previous journal saying that you are treating their non-responsiveness as a sign of agreement to the withdrawal.

Due to these actions, the process on your manuscript may get paused or even stopped. In a worst case, if the second journal doesn’t agree to process your manuscript now, you should also withdraw from them, and then, after writing to the first journal, think of submitting to a fresh journal. Of course, to this new journal, you need to provide all the details of the previous submissions. This sounds a bit messy, but again, this would be the most appropriate way to proceed.

For more insights into similar scenarios, you may refer to the following resources:

All the best for the next steps.

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