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I submitted a paper to Elsevier recently. The editor told me that its similarity tool found more than 80% of word coincidence and sent me the report. I realized that the test actually referred to the same paper, specifically the version posted in Arxiv. I thought this was very odd because the Elsevier recommends uploading the manuscript by retrieving the sources directly from Arxiv, which is what I did. After explaining to the editor what happened, he asked me to withdraw the paper from Arxiv and only submit it again after acceptance.

I would like to know if it is possible to upload a new version of the paper on Arxiv after having withdrawn it. Has anyone ever had a similar situation before?

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    If you withdraw a paper from arXiv it can still be retrieved and read though, so it's not clear what the editor is hoping to achieve here. And Elsevier generally allows preprints as far as I'm aware.
    – Anyon
    Commented Feb 27, 2019 at 15:24
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    It sounds like this editor doesn't know what he is doing. The fact that two copies of the same paper exist has nothing to do with plagiarism. In your situation, I would withdraw the paper from the journal and submit elsewhere.
    – David Ketcheson
    Commented Feb 27, 2019 at 15:42
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    Does the journal have an official preprint policy on their website?
    – Emilie
    Commented Feb 27, 2019 at 16:04
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    Perhaps the editor isn't concerned about "self-plagiarism" but about the anonymity of the reviewing process.
    – henning no longer feeds AI
    Commented Feb 27, 2019 at 16:26
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    Agreeing with @Anyon. Most likely, withdrawing the paper from the arXiv will not withdraw it from whatever automated plagiarism checker the editorial office is using!
    – darij grinberg
    Commented Feb 28, 2019 at 3:59

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I totally agree with the comments of @anyon and @david-ketcheson. I'd suggest that you

  1. point the editor to the guidelines regarding self-archiving of the journal and/or Elsevier in general and, if this fails,
  2. contact your library, because there are people dealing with this kind of situations very often and they usually have (other) contact persons/options at the publisher.
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