Did you give away your copyright? As long as you are the holder of the copyright, you can publish in multiple forms and versions. However, if you have legally transfered your copyright, the publishing rights remain with that first mentioned journal. Copyrights (intellectual property) do matter, not payments.

Did you give away your copyright? As long as you are the holder of the copyright, you can publish in multiple forms and versions. However, if you have legally transfered your copyright, the publishing rights remain with that first mentioned journal. Copyrights (intellectual property) do matter, not payments.

Once I had the same situation with a journal. But I immediately informed I am withdrawing my article when they mentioned i have to pay after it was accepted. There were no word about the fee for authors on their website. After that, I never submit my articles unless no publication fee is clearly indicated.

The Journal "X" accepted your article for publication, but under condition that you will pay a "publication fee". Until now as I understood from your note you have not yet paid this "Publication fee" to the Journal. Do not pay this money at all and see how they will react. My understanding of your situation is that even if you'll pay the Publication Payment to the Journal "X " it will only mean that you follow their rules of publication. In other words your Intellectual (Author's) rights will not be lost (they will not be transferred to the Journal "X".

It happened to me once. I submitted the manuscript to the journal but later find out the impact factor was low and they were not indexed as they claimed. I wrote to them to stop further process on my article but no reply after several attempts. Two months later I came across my article online, I sent mails to every members on their contact list including every member of the editorial board. At the end, I was able to retrieved and unpublished the manuscript just because I did not sign the copyright form as Stephen I. Ternyik said. Though the manuscript spent over a year with another journal before they could even sent it back to me for correction.

I will advise you to let the journal be if you are convinced the paper is well prepared and devoid of error. After all no one is asking for money.

I will go with Stephen's suggestion. If the copyright is yet to be transferred, you have the right to tell them to unpublished the article. Much more that you were not carried along before the publication.

The first publisher is to be blamed. It show they are not organised. Ignore them as long as you will not include them in your CV as two different papers.

The significance of an author's fee for publication varies by field. In the sciences, it is common with good journals & most research grants cover such fees. But in humanities & most social science journals, this is uncommon & payment for publication usually reflects a low rated journal. It is not considered appropriate to send a text to more than one journal at a time or to have the same paper published in more than one journal....except if it is clearly shown as a reprint.

You have to secure a withdrawal of the published paper from the first journal before going ahead to publish it in another journal.

Whether you paid the article publication fee or not, you need to review the terms of publication of the journal to be aware of any copyright infringement. Where not applicable, you may deal with your article anyway you deem fit pots-publication. However, other publishers may decline publication of any article already/previously published in another journal to avoid copyright infringement and possible litigations therefrom. Consequently, it is advisable you write Journal "Y" and withdraw your manuscript, stating that it has already been published elsewhere. That would be understandable, as there's no harm intended. Journal "Y" may still decide to publish, nonetheless!

Warm regards!

@ Leonid V Vladimirov

Thank you very much for your answer. I still didn't pay any money or send any copyright from. I request them to waive the publication fee but they didn't reply me anymore. Moreover, they didn't send me any proof copy. Without my concern, they published it.

@ Segun Michael Abegunde

Thanks for your comment. I am facing similar type of problem.

@ Edwin Chigozie Nwokorie

Thank you for your comment.

In journal Y, its almost ready to publish. They already upload the abstract. Moreover, journal X didn't inform me about the publication & anything else.

@ Stephen I. Ternyik

Thank you very much.

I didn't send any copyright form or anything else.

I think it is a good idea to save all the emails which you send to X journal to use them in next future if necessary

Probably the first journal accepted your plea. It's just that they should have communicated with you. Leave it as it is and stop the second journal. However, make sure you contact the editor of the first journal to finalise all publication procedures and copyright issues.

I think you should give rights to the your fist publisher X, because they accept your request! Ultimately, you have also given permission to publisher to publish the paper, if they publish free of charge! So, confirm with first publisher X and than inform second publisher Y regarding withdrawal of your manuscript.

@ Shamji D Parmar

Thanks for your answer.

After sending the email about fee waiver, they didn't inform me about the publication. Even , they didn't confirm me after publishing the paper in April issue. That's the basic reason to submit the paper to another journal.

You need to be smart...you can better still ignore them