本研究主旨在於探討學術期刊普遍禁止一稿多投的現象與其成因。文章中將使用考慮出版者以及學術投稿者的兩階段模型來刻劃投稿、審查，以及投稿規則決策的過程。

初步模型將呈現當投稿者無明顯時間偏好以及各期刊審稿延遲時間一致時，一稿一投或是一稿多投規則對於整體學術產業而言並無差異。其後本文第四章將導入差異審稿延遲所帶來的影響並得出擁有較高聲望的期刊為避免在一稿多投制度下次級期刊利用較快的審查速度奪取較高品質的文章因而將不願意開放一稿多投的結論。

本研究後部分章節將分析各投稿規則對於整體產業福利水準之影響並得到以下結論。一稿一投制度不見得會為整體產業帶來福利增進，但由於投稿者與出版者之間利益不一致性的存在終將難以使得一稿多投成為最後的均衡投稿規則。

This paper attempts to explore “why the journals in most academic fields like economics refuse to accept Multiple-submission (or simultaneous submission).” In this study, we use a two-stage model involving publishers and academic authors to illustrate the process of submitting, reviewing, and the submission policy determining.

The first model shows an indifference result for the whole academic industry to adopt a Sole-submission or a Multiple-submission rule when authors’ utility is time-irrelevant and the reviewing delays of both journals are identical. We latter introduce the effect of differentiated refereeing delay of journals on the authors’ submission behavior in chapter 4 and show that a journal with higher prestige will refuse to adopt multiple submission rule to avoid the possibility that a faster reviewing process may give the less prestigious journal ability to “steal” high quality papers from the more prestigious one under multiple-submission.

The welfare is further studied in the later sections. We calculate the overall welfare of the industry and find that even thought the current sole-submission system is not necessarily welfare superior than multiple-submission, it seems that the rigidity of the submission rule is hard to be removed due to the conflicting interests between authors and publishers.

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