Pathway for previously reviewed papers

The IDSA Journals (Clinical Infectious Diseases, The Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Open Forum Infectious Diseases) welcome papers that have been peer reviewed by another medical journal and were not accepted for publication at that journal, where the authors believe they can address the essential concerns identified by previous peer reviewers. To submit such a paper, authors should send a pre-submission inquiry to the relevant journal contact email:

• Clinical Infectious Diseases (CID): [email protected]

• The Journal of Infectious Diseases (JID): [email protected]

• Open Forum Infectious Diseases (OFID): [email protected]

Enquiries must include both the paper submitted to the other journal and the decision letter received from the previous journal, with peer review comments in their entirety. The editors will respond to indicate if the journal is interested in the submission.

If the editors express interest, the author can then revise the paper according to the peer review comments received and then submit the paper to the journal. When submitting, the authors should:

• Respond to the submission question, “Have you submitted a pre-submission inquiry, or communicated with an editor about your manuscript prior to submission?” with “Yes, I submitted a pre-submission inquiry and am submitting via the Pathway for Previously Reviewed Papers.” You will then be asked to provide the name of the editor you corresponded with and to upload a copy of your correspondence with them.

• Upload the decision letter they received from the previous journal with peer reviewer comments in its entirety and a point-by-point response as supplementary material along with their submission.

• Submit a track-changes version of the manuscript indicating how it has been revised to address the previous review comments and a clean version of the manuscript with those changes accepted.

These submissions should be limited to manuscripts reviewed and rejected at high-impact journals. The journal’s editors will review the request and the attached material to determine the next steps for this paper. If the paper is appropriate for CID, JID, or OFID, but still needs additional revision, the editors may elect to send the manuscript for additional external peer review; however, if the editors, after internal review, agree that the previous reviewers’ comments were fully addressed and the paper requires no further revision, they may accept the paper immediately without additional external review. This process is intended to both speed the review process for previously reviewed papers and reduce the number of requests the IDSA Journals make of their expert volunteer reviewers.

We welcome presubmission inquiries via the contact addresses listed above if you are unsure whether your manuscript is appropriate for this pathway.