I had recently setup a cohort of pregnant women in Pakistan; exploring a variety of variables related to prenatal stress. One of the major problems in publishing is to keep your paper writing focused. And with more than 100 variables, it becomes difficult to do so.
Do you think it would be ethical to break the study into 3 papers exploring seemingly related variables say association of diet and exercise with prenatal stress and other paper exploring obstetric stressors with stress. Is this ethical?
I am asking this question because I have had a paper rejected recently that studied 50 plus variables related to PTSD.