Last July (=9 months ago), we submitted a manuscript to a quite renowned journal in our field.
On the Editorial Manager Dashboard, the status has been since "Awaiting for Editor Assignment". We enquire about this problem a few weeks after submission, with no reply, then regularly after this. A few months after that, we had an admin reply saying "Thanks for your patience, we enquire".
Since we really want to publish there we hung out on this. But in December, tired of waiting, I hacked all the editorial board to enquire whether they had heard about our manuscript and asking for help.
Finally, the Editor in Chief replied that he was personally handling the manuscript and this is why it did not show any assigned editor on our dashboard. He said a reviewer has been assigned to this and that a second one was pending....
And since then, nothing... We wrote several time but with no reply. Since this is the Editor in Chief, I have no one to turn to at the journal and admin is not replying. We have lost considerable time to withdraw the manuscript now (and it would make things "easy" for them) but things seem to be stuck.
None of my colleagues or network have experienced such a bad situation in their publication process. This is why I turned to you for some advice.
Thank you so much in advance for your time and help.
Hello Elise S Dan-Glauser
My advice is that you should continue to wait because you seem to really want to publish in this journal. I think writing to the EIC again would be reasonable - and I would use the main "excuse" because I want to find out how the reviewer(s) are progressing. If they say that they are still trying to find a second reviewer, that would be most disappointing!!
Personally, I have never been so convinced that I must publish in a certain journal. There are a few in my own field so my personal preference is that if I heard nothing in 6 months, I would shift it to another. (There are actually two really "big" journals in my field; one from Europe, one from USA; I would be very excited if I got an article in either!)
I suggest that the EIC is interested in publishing your article and that you will receive positive feedback shorty. Just wait and contact the editor from time to time.
Hi
I think sometimes a person cn wait but sometimes not if anyone has to face an interview to attain higher position.
For me uh do one thing.. U might be having another softcopy of ur paper.. Send it to another renowed journal.. But prior to that snd one mail to them.. There is no need to publish my paper as I am sending it to another journal...
Time has valve...
@Elise S Dan-Glauser I can relate your situation. Could you please share the email template for a direct enquiry to the editor?
In the case of a minor revision I expected less than a month for a decision.
A big thanks to all for your insightfull responses. It helped a lot. Best
Elise S Dan-Glauser ,
What I would suggest is that if it is a recognised journal of a big publisher (e.g. Elsevier, Springer, Etc.), then they usually publish the mean time to first response. I am assuming you contacted the journal at least after the average time to first response. If your wait time after your first letter exceeds the left tail of the distribution (e.g from zero days to the average), then I would retract and look for an alternate journal. This is a general rule and you should think on whether it applies. For example:
* Lack of reviewers- generally if it is not resolved by the time allotted by the rule above, then you should definitely retract
* Complexity of the paper- If it is interdisciplinary or mathematically dense, then it could take more time. You should adjust the time given by the left tail of the distribution by a multiple based on the complexity or interdisciplinary focus.
Hope your issue gets resolved
Regards
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