A manuscript transfer between journals is the publisher moving your submission from one journal to another with your explicit consent. A legitimate transfer costs nothing, changes no review standard, and states plainly whether reviewer reports travel with it. Directive Publications publishes no transfer policy, so nothing about transfers here is yet a written commitment.
A process that is not published is a process you cannot hold anyone to.
What a manuscript transfer between journals actually is
A manuscript transfer is an administrative act. The editorial office of one journal sends your manuscript files, and sometimes the reviewer reports, to a second journal, which begins its own editorial process. Publishers also call it a cascade or a referral. Where the reports travel with it, the receiving journal may decide without commissioning new reviews; what must not change is that the receiving journal's own editor reaches that decision.
Three conditions define a transfer done properly:
- The consent is explicit, and it is yours. The manuscript moves only after you say yes, in writing, to a named journal. A tick box inside a submission form is not an answer to a direct question.
- The receiving journal makes its own decision. A transfer changes the address, not the standard. The second journal's handling editor is free to reject the paper on the first day.
- Nothing is charged for the move. A fee that appears because of a transfer, rather than because of an acceptance, is a charge for nothing.
The ICMJE Recommendations treat a submitted manuscript as the authors' private, confidential property, and say that reviewers' comments should not be published or otherwise publicised without the permission of the reviewer, the author and the editor. Consent is not a formality: without it, a transfer moves your unpublished work, and someone else's unpublished opinion of it, to a party neither of you agreed to.
Five questions to ask before you accept any transfer offer
Ask all five in writing before you reply yes. A publisher that will not put the answers in an email has already answered.
| Ask this | An answer that should reassure you | An answer that should not |
|---|---|---|
| Did I ask for this, or did it arrive attached to the rejection? | The transfer is offered as one option among several, or in reply to a question you asked, and is optional. | The offer sits inside the rejection letter with a deadline, a discount, or a pre-filled link that consents for you. |
| What does the transfer cost, now or later? | Nothing is payable for the transfer. A charge arises only if the receiving journal accepts the paper after review, and its fee is published. | A transfer fee, an administration fee, a fast-track fee, or any price quoted privately rather than published. |
| Who decides at the receiving journal, and on what evidence? | An editorial process the receiving journal publishes itself, ending in a decision its own editor makes on evidence you are told about. | Wording such as editorial acceptance, formal checks only, or publication implied without an editor's decision — reusing the first journal's reports is ordinary, deciding without an editor is not. |
| Do the reviewer reports move with it, and who sees them? | A plain yes or no in writing, copies of the reports sent to you, and the option to move the manuscript without them. | Silence, or that is handled internally, or reports passed on that you have never been shown. |
| Where is the transfer policy published? | A web address you can read before consenting, applying to every author on the same terms. | The policy exists only in the email you were sent, or cannot be found on the journal's own site. |
Why an unprompted transfer offer after rejection deserves a slow reply
An unprompted transfer offer after rejection is best judged by the mechanism behind it, not by the motive. A rejection has already cost a publisher the work of handling and reviewing a manuscript, and a transfer offer converts that spent effort into a possible article processing charge on a journal you did not choose. The incentive is not dishonest in itself; a transfer can be run properly, and the practice is long established. It turns into a problem when an offer is engineered to be accepted quickly rather than understood.
Four features turn a referral into a sales pitch, all visible in the message itself:
- The offer arrives in the same message as the rejection, before you have read the reports.
- It is time-limited, or carries a discount that expires.
- Acceptance is implied rather than decided: the language talks about publication dates, not about editors.
- Consent is assumed. You are told the manuscript will be transferred unless you object.
Opt-out consent is not consent: if declining requires an action from you, the default has been set for someone else's benefit.
What Directive Publications publishes about transfers, and what it does not
Directive Publications does not publish a manuscript transfer policy. There is no transfer page, and no transfer clause on our editorial policies, peer review or author guidelines pages. On consent, fees and reviewer reports, there is no published document you can hold us to.
What is published, and what you can hold us to:
- Peer review is double-blind. At least two independent expert reviewers are sought for each research manuscript, the handling editor takes the decision, and appeals go to the Editor-in-Chief, whose decision is final. No route around that process is documented, and no published document says what would happen to a manuscript arriving here from another journal.
- Submission is free. The article processing charge described on the Publication Charges page is payable only if and when a manuscript is formally accepted after peer review. If it is rejected, nothing is owed. No transfer fee is published anywhere on this site, for the plain reason that no transfer process is published either.
- Three waiver routes are published in Fee Waivers & Discounts: low-income and lower-middle-income economies, unfunded or self-funded research, and discretionary cases.
- Manuscripts are submitted by email to the editorial office. There is no submission portal, and no published process describes a manuscript being passed anywhere else.
Anything beyond that list is a conversation, not a policy, and a conversation may be declined without consequence.
Whether reviewer reports travel with the manuscript
Reports travelling means the receiving journal is given the reviewer comments written for the first journal, and may use them in its own decision. A second editor may then weigh a report you have not read, and an error inside it can follow the manuscript unchallenged.
Insist on three things before any report moves:
- A written statement of whether reports will be sent, and to whom.
- Copies of the reports first, so you see what the receiving editor will see.
- The option to transfer the manuscript alone, with the reports withheld.
Directive Publications has no published position on any of the three. Ask in the email thread, and keep the reply.
An email that pins a transfer offer down
Send this email to the editorial office before agreeing to any transfer.
Subject: Transfer offer — [manuscript title / reference number]
Dear Editorial Office,
Thank you for the decision, and for the suggestion of transferring the manuscript. Before I decide, please confirm the following in writing:
1. That no charge of any kind arises from the transfer itself, and that any fee would be payable only on formal acceptance after peer review.
2. That the receiving journal's own editor will reach an independent decision, and whether that decision would rest on new reviews or on the reports already written.
3. Whether the reviewer reports would be sent with the manuscript, and if so, that I will receive copies of them first.
4. That I may transfer the manuscript without the reports, or decline the transfer entirely, with no effect on the decision already made.
5. The web address of the transfer policy on which these answers are based.Please treat this message as withholding consent until I have your reply.
Kind regards,
[Name], corresponding author
If you decline the transfer, you lose nothing
Declining a transfer does not change the decision already made, and the appeal route to the Editor-in-Chief remains the published way to challenge it. Your manuscript, your data and the reports you were sent remain yours. Format for a journal you selected yourself and submit there directly.
For the fee position and the waiver routes, read Publication Charges and Fee Waivers & Discounts; for the process a manuscript goes through here, read Peer Review. How to Respond to Reviewer Comments (With Example Replies) covers what to do with the reports you already hold, How to Choose the Right Journal for Your Research covers picking the next venue on your own terms, and How to Identify a Predatory Journal: A Complete Checklist sets out the other signals that travel with an offer engineered to be accepted quickly. Our editorial policies align with the COPE Core Practices, and where a practice is not written down, this blog says so.