What does 'published elsewhere' mean?
That's probably OK (hard to be sure without specifics). In several areas, it is quite common to post preprints (e.g. in the ArXiv https://arxiv.org/ ) and those do not prevent one from submitting it to a journal. Some areas (e.g. CS) are even OK with publishing preliminary versions in conference proceedings. What is not allowed is to submit a paper previously published in another journal or even submit a paper to more than one journal simultaneously. I think everyone frowns on that.