It is being seen that Editors of some reputed Journals are putting on hold the manuscripts and not updating review states even passing more than six months from submission. Researchers are submitting their manuscripts to reputed Journals buts such practice of some Editors is not fare and is a tendency of harassing Researchers and killing their interest. Instead of following such practice, Editors should encourage Researchers by proving review comments on submitted manuscripts in reasonable time at least first reviewers comments within 3/4 months. Reviewers as well as Researchers opinion in this regard may be helpful to the research community.
Many journal editors struggle to get enough reviewers to assist them. Considering that reviewing is done on a voluntary basis and many academics are also overworked in other areas it's not surprising that finding reviewers is a major challenge. All of us that have research and publishing experience could help with this by volunteering to act as reviewers, particularly if we are hoping for our own research to be reviewed. (We might also note that this model of reviewing may no longer be fit for purpose and have conversations with universities and research funders and journals themselves about other ways to support peer review).
Alongside the burden of work on scholars and the number of reviewers volunteering decreasing, the volume of papers being submitted continues to rise. The quality of said submissions is highly variable and some journals are massively oversubscribed. The job of finding and assigning reviewers, chasing up reviews and getting papers edited is considerable. All of this explains the lengthy backlog, particularly of the more popular journals or those where reviewers have resigned and few have offered to take their place.
It is hard for researchers to manage this, particularly if their careers are dependent on publication, but the situation is well known to academia and noting papers are under review is an acceptable addition for one's CV. It isn't fair for researchers, but nor is it fair for reviewers or editors either. It's part of a wider broken academic system, sadly.
I'd not consider it harassment as that's a case of persistent, unwanted and unwelcome attention when people clearly do not want it. Which is the opposite of what you're describing - having to wait for any contact from journals.
Publishing research at conferences, publishing preprints, or other means of dissemination may be valid alongside submitting for journals. As is being very clear on a publication strategy, realistic about what journal to aim for, and clearly meeting their aims and scope to avoid desk rejections. Managing expectations over lengthy waits as the norm since the pandemic is also important and holding institutions and organisations to account that fail to do this is something we can do collectively.
The issues and difficulties being faced by the editors as well as researchers in getting the manuscript reviewed within reasonable time are well expressed by Petra Boynton. There is a need that the well experienced expert researchers should come forward and take the responsibility to support editors and promote research by considering assigned manuscript and submitting their review comments timely. There is one suggestion that the editors should provide the updated status on review of manuscript regularly on their Journal webpage even when there is no progress so that their effort is visible to the researchers.
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