I recognize that I made a mistake, but I think it should not be taken as harshly as you are doing, particularly in this kind of situation, I already stated that I sent a letter to the second journal after the rejection decision and I apologized in that letter. Perhaps if the editors starts to treat the authors professionally, none of this would have happened

@Ameer You submitted a paper to two different journals, in violation of both journals' terms. You might have your own reasons, but from the second journal's perspective, you are not someone to be trusted. Since they get plenty of submissions, why risk considering further submissions from a known bad actor?

@DavidA.Craven It was not an easy decision, I consulted people and read about similar situations before doing it, and I found that many people did this when the editor is irresponsibly acting. As I said, I immediately sent a letter to the second journal to let them know that I have no ill intentions and I apologized. If I am not to be trusted even after explaining the situation, then there is nothing more I can do.

@Ameer please consider that publishing is not a trial, it is a transaction between two entities. The publisher probably never read your apology letter, it is extremely likely that they comunicated to you the rejection of your submission and at the same time put you in a kind of spam filter: they have no interest in doing any transactions with you. Exactly, there is nothing more you can do with the second publisher. It is not like they are publicly going saying you are unreliable, simply they do not consider doing any transasctions with you, but others are still free to discuss with you.

@Ameer As EarlGrey said, you made a mistake. You need to think of things from their perspective. Journals are overwhelmed with submissions, and everyone who breaks the rules will have an excuse, of course. Rather than spend time and money trying to decide whether you were genuine, just blacklist and move on. They are under no contractual obligation to listen to your apology. You might not consider it fair, but that isn't going to help in life.

@DavidA.Craven If everyone sticks to their own perspective without any consideration of the situation of the other side, then this is not the appropriate way to build a just and fair system in any aspect of life

@Ameer sorry to jump in. Life is not fair. Additionally, you cannot expect from the other to tag along your mood of doing fair things. Yes, it would be nice, no, it is not the way it works. Consider that life for most of its is not about avoiding unfair situations, is how to get out of unfair situations without propagating unfairness. Reg your specific case: if an excuse letter is what it takes to correct a violation of terms, it would be exploited by all the unfair people in the world., building an unfair system.

@Ameer Although I am all for living a life consistent with one own ethical system, I also know that life is unfair and do not give a sh*t about what you believe.

@EarlGrey Thank you sir for sharing your perspective, I recognize that it reflects a huge part of our reality and our world today, but struggling for justice and fairness will always be humanity's most wanted dream, perhaps unattainable but worth looking for

@Ameer absolutely, but to reach this goal you have to check carefully on what ground you stand. Whether it is an attainable goal or not, it does not matter, you have to reach it from where we stand now, otherwise it is just dreaming without any progress, dreaming that rapidly turns in sour complaining. It is not like you reach the goal out of the blue, nor that we live in an unfair world because we decided to have it that way (kind of, at least).

@Ameer You have done a bad thing. You were caught doing a bad thing. They think you are bad. You think you are not because you have an excuse. Why are they wrong and you right? Because you think you are right, that's the only reason. They are well within their rights to cut you off, and not listen to your excuse.

@DavidA.Craven I never said I am right or that I did not do anything wrong, I would not have apologized if I thought so. You just keep putting things in my mouth, I do not really care whether you liked my explanation or not

@DavidA.Craven I was really done with the first journal before sending the manuscript to the second journal, and I still have no intention to carry on with them. So it is really hilarious that you think I only apologized because I was caught. Read carefully before making baseless and laughable comments

@Ameer A man is married to someone, but wants to break it off. He files for divorce, but she keeps delaying things, the courts are taking ages, so he gets fed up. He starts dating again. Then his new girlfriend finds out he's still married and dumps him. Should he be annoyed with her?

@DavidA.Craven This is more hilarious, do you really think that my situation is like marriage? Let me tell you the obvious difference that you could not catch. In marriage, there is a contractual agreement, whereas in my situation I am under no contractual obligations to remain with the first journal

@Ameer BUT YOU ARE UNDER AN OBLIGATION NOT TO HAVE IT SUBMITTED TO TWO JOURNALS AT THE SAME TIME. I mean, Jesus, can you not understand this? You lied to the second journal, they caught you lying, and they banned you. Suck it up, and be glad they didn't tell everyone that you are a liar and you get banned by everyone.

@DavidA.Craven I am definitely not, you are just pathetically and desperately trying to put everything on me. Many people did the same and submitted their papers to another journal when the editors did not respond to their withdrawal request, my mistake is as I said I did not explain the situation to the second journal. Take it easy man, you got furious because you have been called out for your lack of understanding, really pathetic

@Ameer That is different. You lied to the second journal by not informing them of the situation. You broke your contract with Journal 2, and yes, you did have a contract with them under the concept of promissory estoppel. Now you are blaming journal 1 for why you lied to journal 2. Your lies to J2 are not forgiven because of anything J1 did. "Look what they made me do" is not a defence you are going to get far with. J2 is reasonable in banning you, and ignoring your protestations. You are in the wrong. As a journal editor, I would ban you, and I would ignore your self-serving pleas as well.

You obviously don't seem to get that you are in the wrong here. So I'm done trying to help you out. Maybe when you grow a little older and mature you'll realize that people can't always just say sorry and everything is forgiven. You are being punished for doing a bad thing, and you don't like it. But they won't stop punishing you just because you feel put out about it. I'm done here.

@Ameer I think you are not understanding the purpose of an apology. An apology expresses your remorse; it does not compel forgiveness. You may have apologized, but you have not been forgiven. The person apologizing does not get to choose whether they are forgiven, the person being apologized to does.

David and EarlGrey are trying to be helpful here and to explain what has gone wrong, it's not appropriate to respond rudely to them.

@BryanKrause I have been all respectful to Mr. EarlGrey. It was David who started being rude and accusing me of intending to make duplicate submission despite making it clear that I had no intention of this kind in my post

@Ameer I don't think David is accusing you of anything, rather they are presenting an argument from the publisher's viewpoint

I agree, it does not sound like you meant to make a duplicate submission, but basically, the second journal doesn't believe you.

They probably encounter a lot of people that try to slip multiple submissions in, and they don't have much patience for borderline cases. It's not worth their time to do a detailed investigation, it's easiest for them to just walk away when they see a red flag.

@BryanKrause no David literally said I am a liar and kept assuming things about me

@Ameer You did lie. A lie of omission is a lie. You didn't tell J2 that you also submitted it to J1. There's your lie.

You might claim you forgot about telling them, but from their perspective, you lied.

I actually don't think you aimed to deliberately mislead them. But you did lie, and you did get caught.

Standard journal text: Submission of a manuscript implies: that the work described has not been published before; that it is not under consideration for publication anywhere else. By submitting you lied.

@Bryan Krause I did all that what I had to do to clear things up and explain the situation, I am not asking them to forcefully accept my apologies. They have the right to accept it or not

@DavidA.Craven A lie generally requires some level of intention, even if it's by omission. I do think that the journal feels they were misled, but it's possible OP did not lie if they believed that their request for withdrawal meant the manuscript was no longer under review. In any case, it would be best to be upfront about this sort of thing to avoid any possibility for confusion - much like the divorce/new girlfriend situation

@Ameer Okay, sounds good. I think you got two answers then that are in agreement about what your next steps should be with a third journal

@DavidA.Craven I sent two withdrawal requests to first journal, in the second request I made it clear I will consider that the manuscript is no longer under consideration by the journal and I will submit it to another journal whether they responded or not. I do not take any responsibility if they fail to respond, that is what I said

@Ameer Two requests over a period that in many parts of the world are holidays and semester breaks, so it may be that there is no one on the other end to receive your message

@Bryan Krause no I literally waited three weeks of working days before submitting to the second journal, in the posts I found online people were suggesting far short time

@BryanKrause This is a good question. Is something a lie if it was a deliberate misleading as to the facts, or whether it requires that the person make a gain from this action.

Many journals require you to explicitly click a button saying the work is not under consideration elsewhere. I suppose people might just click it without thinking, but if you have been thinking about this hard, and talking to other people about it, it makes the threshold for reasonable doubt higher. I don't think Ameer set out to mislead the journal for personal gain, but in submitting he probably did lie.

@Ameer Yes, I think that was probably reasonable, it's just that you should have told the second journal about it. They're the ones that get to decide whether it's okay, not you. This is the purpose of David's divorce/girlfriend example

@Bryan Krause I definitely agree with you and I made it clear in my post, then David came and remained all focused on that mistake and even started assuming that I had ill intentions, I could not accept this

@Ameer Understood.

@DavidA.Craven I think it's best to leave aside the philosophy of what makes something a "lie" versus some other label. I think Ameer is clear on what can be done differently in the future and why these journals have felt like something suspicious was going on.

@BryanKrause I think his question has been answered, but the underlying issue seems to be 'I should be able to do things first, apologize afterwards, and not suffer any consequences for my original actions'. This is probably not the best place to try to sort that out. But the correct answer should be 'You did something wrong and you need to accept that'.

@Bryan Krause Ok, he could have made his point politely without accusing me of being a liar and that I had ill intentions, I was done with the first journal long before sending my manuscript to the second journal, so I had no intention to make a duplicate submission. I was really not intending to publish the paper in any journal other the second journal

I think this is enough for me, and I'll leave everyone alone!

@David A. Craven As I said I sent a second withdrawal request to the first journal and I did clearly state in that request that I will consider that paper unsubmitted and no longer under consideration whether they responded or not. So I did not intentionally lie to the second journal. The first journal should take responsibility for their failure to respond

@DavidA.Craven I think it's best to stick to your own decision there and not try to have a last word.

@Ameer Probably best to walk away from the conversation at this point, I think your points and situation have been made clearly, and I hope you'll have some better luck with the next journal. Indeed, communication with journals can be quite frustrating

@Ameer I don't think continuing the conversation with David is going to be productive

@Bryan Krause Thank you for being fair and giving me the opportunity to clarify the matter, best regards

This conversation makes no sense. Withdrawing a paper from a journal is a unilateral decision, and it is effective the minute it is done. The first journal has no say in this. The OP has done nothing morally or ethically wrong. He has at most done something that was likely to lead to a misunderstanding. But the berating by David... is way out of line.

@wimi I think we're done here, so no need to restart anything.

@wimi Thank you sir for clarifying the whole matter in a few lines. I did not really start considering that paper is no longer under consideration by the first journal only after directly informing the publisher about the matter