My wild guess:

1. Editor is either on long leave or has resigned.

2. The paper has been referred again to original reviewers for their comments and they have slept over it.

3. The revised manuscript is lost in transit.

4. In the unfortunate case of death of either the Editor or Reviewer, the manuscript is being left unattended. It happened with one of my colleagues. He received a paper for review and took it to home for reading. Unfortunately he died the next day. His wife was a Scientist and she recognised the importance of the Reviewer work. She returned the manuscript to the Editor.

Bassam - sounds like you have done all the right things. It is obviously frustrating - but my advice is that you have come this far and just wait - and keep prompting the administrators every few months. You should her at some point - and sounds like it will eventually be accepted.

Hi Bassam,

I agree with Dean Whitehead ; you seem to have responded in the right way to the major and minor revisions. As you mentioned, minor revisions generally don't need a full review again and can be dealt with by the editor (within 1-2 months). In addition to contacting the editorial team, you might try to contact the editor directly.

Good luck,

Martijn

I would like to suggest you to wait! It is normal for prestigious journals to take longer processing time (in some cases (e.g., UK based journals) 1 to 3 years! but they do it very well). However., the green signal of your paper acceptance is sure.

Per Muhammad Ali 's response, I respectfully disagree that any review process should take over a year. While this might occur, I do not think this is the purpose of peer review and many colleagues that I have interacted indicate that two weeks is a golden standard for initial feedback. In related discussions I have indicated that time to initial feedback should be an important factor and it should not be excessive.

Another subtopic brought about by this post is that there are differences in peer review vs. editorial review. Briefly without opening this subtopic here, editorial review can be as if not more strict than peer review, strongly representing the adherence to scope and editing responsibilities.

Per all comments it does appear you have done the right thing and are on track to have an accepted article. It can actually be a nice break from intense writing when you come this far. Definitely try to contact the editor, it has been over two weeks but two months is starting to become a 'long-time' to hear back.

In my opinion, letting an author wait for 2 years is unfair and definitively not OK! In the worst case, the work is outdated after that time or someone else publishes the same results. As a reviewer, I'm normally given 2-3 weeks to write my report. My personal experience is that the better the journal, the shorter is the peer-review and publication process. In our field of research (chemistry), well-reputed journals published by Elsevier, the RSC (Royal Society of Chemistry) or the ACS (American Chemical Society) all have short reviewing and publication times. Our last paper published in an RSC journal (Chemical Communications) was published online only six weeks after submission of the manuscript. The only "outlier" in many years was a paper published in a Springer journal (see attachment) which took almost 2 years to publication. I never found out why.

Bassam Bou-Fakhreddine: After all, I would contact the Editor-in-chief directly and ask for the reason of this unusual delay. If you get no response again, you might consider submitting the revised manuscript to another journal.

I agree with Dean Whitehead , Frank T. Edelmann , Cory Jensen

If you are not in a hurry, you should wait. It is almost on the verge of getting accepted. But if you need the publication badly due to university requirements or other academic reasons, you can send a withdrawal mail to the editor. If still don't get a response from the editor, you can submit to other journal where you feel it can be accepted at an early date.

Normally after sending a withdrawal mail, you may get a response from the production department and you can straightaway receive the proof. Sometimes they also miss some papers and you need to remind them properly.

Regards

My wild guess:

1. Editor is either on long leave or has resigned.

2. The paper has been referred again to original reviewers for their comments and they have slept over it.

3. The revised manuscript is lost in transit.

4. In the unfortunate case of death of either the Editor or Reviewer, the manuscript is being left unattended. It happened with one of my colleagues. He received a paper for review and took it to home for reading. Unfortunately he died the next day. His wife was a Scientist and she recognised the importance of the Reviewer work. She returned the manuscript to the Editor.

Its unprofessional to keep a paper for over 2 years. What is scientific is such attitude?

Since you have wasted so much time, you can just be patient and complete the review process. Some journals actually keep articles for longer period than that.

Good Answer Alok Nahata

Keeping some waiting for such a long time is not fair. Claims about the review speed are usually provided by prestigious publishers such as Elsevier or Springer about their journals but they are sometimes not met and the author has to face the delay.

If a paper is rejected after a year or more of review the research will be outdated and the author may have rewrite the paper or may not be able to publish the paper altogether.

Dear Bassam Bou-Fakhreddine has your problem been solved in the meantime?

You need to contact journal through mail it might have been misplaced in the system update.

You should first contact the editors. If you don’t get any feedback after one month, I think you should submit to another journal

The editor should be contacted through e mail and try to be ready with another journal with scope of your paper if reply doesn't come in next 30 days.

Dear Bassam Bou-Fakhreddine your original question "Still waiting for the decision about a revised manuscript for more than 120 days" was asked on February 14 this year (i.e. more than 10 months ago) and still receives a few answers. In the meantime your problem should have long be solved and your revised manuscript must have been either acceted or rejected. I think it would be polite to tell all readers of this thread what the outcome was.

Just 4 months. I am waiting for more than 1 year to receive the decision. very difficult to understand the journal policies.

Dear Frank T. Edelmann , you get to the heart of the matter, as always. I wish I had had a senior scientist as a mentor during my university years as you obviously are.

Johannes

Dear Frank T. Edelmann , I would like to apologize for my late clarification.

The paper was initially submitted in Dec. 2017. The decision was received in Feb. 2020, that is after 2 years 3 months. The Journal response: Major revision -> minor revision "Revise for Editor Only'' -> reject. The status stayed "with the editor" for around 4 months and suddenly, I get a rejection for my manuscript from the Chief editor. The review was not accurate and didn't provide anything new that strengthen the paper. Ironically, the chief editor put remarks on the format of the manuscript because I used Latex to generate the document. In fact, I did have a bad previous experience with that journal. My mistake was that I did submit a new manuscript to the same journal.

Really, I don't know what is the best description I can give to this journal....

Sorry to hear that. The similar case was happend to me. I am tryingto publish a systematic review paper on COVID-19 but we failed and still now trying.

Dear Bassam Bou-Fakhreddine many thanks for the (rather unfortunate) update. I'm really sorry to hear that you made such bad experiences with that journal. The unprofessional handling of your manuscript really doesn't speak for the journal. As for the new manuscript, you do of course have the possibility to retract the manuscript and submit it to a better journal. Perhaps you can seek the advice of a senior faculty member about a better suited journal to publish your work. Good luck!

Dear Frank T. Edelmann , I meant by the new manuscript the one that was rejected....Sure, I will not repeat the same mistake...and of course, I will seek better Journals for publication of my papers.

I just want to remind you that the journal is not obliged to publish everything that the authors send to the editor and has the right to choose. Nevertheless, the journal must promptly inform the authors about the fate of their articles. It is difficult to imagine a situation where a journal is not interested in quality articles, but it is easy to assume that the work on articles in this journal is poorly organized.

Dear @Vadim S. Gorshkov Yes, the journal is not obliged to publish the author's work. But, I need your opinion about a journal whose review time is slow and reject your work after 2 years 3 months... following the order : major revision -> minor revision -> major revision. Do you think the chief editor was right to come with that decision?

You can always email the editor/journal and inquire updates regarding publication process.

It's better to contact the editor of the journal.

Not a good experience I should say. You can resubmit to a better journal next time.