If a journal rejects my paper after review and offers to transfer it, is portable peer review a good deal?

What a transfer offer means

Suppose I submit to a high-ranked journal in the JAMA family. The editors think the paper is above average but not good enough for them. In the past they would simply have rejected it. Today many journals belong to publishing groups that also own lower-ranked journals, or journals so new that they have no impact factor yet, and the editors may ask: would you like us to transfer your paper to JAMA Network Open?

If you agree, the paper can be moved inside the system. The editor and reviewers at the next journal can see the earlier reviews and the reasons for rejection. Some journals also give you a chance to revise in response to the earlier comments.

If you decline, it is an ordinary rejection. The relationship ends, and you are free to submit the paper to any other journal.

Before you accept a transfer, there are several questions to weigh.

First: what is the purpose of this paper, and what impact factor does the receiving journal have?

If you need an impact factor for promotion, check whether the journal you would be transferred to has one. In the example above, JAMA had an impact factor of 157.3 and JAMA Network Open had 13.37 (as of 2022). But one of my course alumni who received such an offer did so when JAMA Network Open was in its first year. It had no impact factor yet, and there was not enough information to predict whether it would get one the next year, or how high it would be.

If you accept a transfer and the paper is accepted, and the journal still has no impact factor at that point, then under a promotion rule that requires one, the paper still cannot be used. Even if the journal gets an impact factor two or three years later, the promotion you missed is missed.

This alumnus did not need papers for promotion. He wanted his name to appear more often in JAMA-family journals and did not care what the impact factor would be in a few years. So he accepted the transfer, and the paper was later published.

Second: does the new journal charge an article processing charge (APC)?

A common situation: a high-ranked traditional journal can accept only about 300 papers a year, but it may receive 30,000 submissions. Rejecting 29,700 of them seems a waste, so the publisher starts open access journals that charge APCs. This adds a new line of business and follows the open access trend in academic publishing.

So most downward-transfer offers point to a newer journal that charges an APC, and usually not a cheap one. Look into it: how much is the APC? Is there a discount for transferred papers? If it costs money, do you have funding? If it has to come from your own pocket, can you accept the price?

The alumni who asked me about this evaluated their offers, and most decided that the transfer was not attractive: either the journal had no impact factor or a low one, or the APC was very high. The JAMA to JAMA Network Open case above was one of the few exceptions.

Taking the idea further: your own "portable review"

This idea came from a colleague's experience. I have submitted many papers and understand that portable review exists because publishers want to lighten reviewers' workload and keep manuscripts inside their own group, so I sometimes apply the idea myself. I use a large open-access publishing group as the example below, but the same idea works within the Lancet group or the JAMA group.

Say I submit to a journal with an impact factor of 7 in a large open-access publishing group, and the paper is rejected, and the publisher does not offer a transfer. Or it offers a transfer to a journal with an impact factor of 1, but I think my paper deserves better, so I decline.

When I move on to the next journal in the same group, say one with an impact factor of 6, the submission system makes me start again and upload everything as a new submission. But in the cover letter I say honestly that I submitted to a particular journal in the same group with an impact factor of 7, I list the reasons for the earlier rejection, and I respond to them one by one and revise the manuscript accordingly.

The aim is to let the publisher's staff and the scholars in its circle see that I am truly proactive: I am honest, and I have even acted on the advice others gave me. Rather than let their staff and editors discover that I was rejected by a higher-ranked journal and seem to be working my way down, I disclose it first and respond to it actively.

One caution: this works only inside the same publishing group, not across groups. If you are rejected by the Lancet and then tell JAMA, "I was rejected by the Lancet, and their comments make sense, so I hope you will accept it," it will probably go badly.