Respected Sir,

The review process involves voluntary service by the reviewers, and one should regard. The reviewers may be busy with some other urgent and time bound assignments. Three months time period for review process is not very long.

Mahdi - there are a number of reasons why there might be a delay in responding. I am Associate Editor for several journals and the process is different with each journal. The Editor may not be one person - but several. In this case, it depends on who you are assigned and their availability. They could be on leave, overseas conference etc. If the journal is a well established and popular journal it may be the sheer volume of submitted manuscripts, at this time, which means a delay getting to yours. With Editor - might also mean that it is with the Editors 'administrator' and similar reasons means that there is a delay before it actually gets to them. With Editor may also mean that a group of editors (board) get together periodically i.e. every month to collectively review all recent submitted manuscripts. Don't assume that the 'moment' you submit a manuscript that it is immediately assigned to an editor who will see it 'there and then'. Editors may even be following up your request without you knowing. Often Editors have to 'chase up' reviewers and that, in itself, can be a long process.

There is 'no harm' following it up with the journal - especially if more time were to pass - but carefully read the author/journal process instructions first that may highlight timeframes. Maybe 3-6 months is seen as normal for the journal. That said, 6 months should be coming to the 'top end' of time that one should expect to wait for review feedback. Are you directly emailing the contact address for the journal? If you are responding to emails they have sent you - they might be 'no-return' sources.

Dean Whitehead, Thanks for the helpful comment. In fact the problem is they are not responding emails! I have sent more than 10 emails to different contact emails of the journal and they did not respond even one email! The status is "Decision started" for more than 3 months! It looks weird!

Mahdi - I think three months is a normal period. Typically, the acceptance of a research article by any standard journal takes anywhere between 6 months to one year. There are some open access journals that can accept the research articles in two to three months of time. When the status for a manuscript changes "Under Review" to "Ready for Decision", it means that the peer-review process is complete and only the editorial decision is pending. Technically, you should be able to withdraw your manuscript from a journal any time prior to acceptance. This would usually be done by contacting the journal (e.g., editor, action editor, etc.).

Mahdi - I think three months is a normal period. Typically, the acceptance of a research article by any standard journal takes anywhere between 6 months to one year. There are some open access journals that can accept the research articles in two to three months of time. When the status for a manuscript changes "Under Review" to "Ready for Decision", it means that the peer-review process is complete and only the editorial decision is pending. Technically, you should be able to withdraw your manuscript from a journal any time prior to acceptance. This would usually be done by contacting the journal (e.g., editor, action editor, etc.).

Dr Manzoor Hussain I emailed them before and asked to withdraw the paper. No response from them again!

Respected Sir,

The review process involves voluntary service by the reviewers, and one should regard. The reviewers may be busy with some other urgent and time bound assignments. Three months time period for review process is not very long.

6 months'' time is quite enough for any renowned journal to convey the decision on the suitability for publication of any scientific communication. If this does not happen and the journal does not bother to respond to author's repeated queries, the author may withdraw the manuscript.

Pritpal Singh Thank you, In fact it is more than 3 months to make the decision by the journal, not the review process. They have the reviews for more than 3 months now!

Dilip Kumar Pal Thank you. We tried to withdraw the paper by sending a request to them. The problem is they did not respond to emails! So what would be the next step?

This generally does not happen with any reputed journal. You may however send them a final email stating that you are withdrawing your manuscript.

Thank you Dilip Kumar Pal , so this way it is eligible to submit the paper to another journal, even if this journal does not reply?

You should write a message to the Editor and ask about the paper.

Laura Bulgariu I did that before, no response!

Just drop a mail to them stating that you are withdrawing the paper and proceed with some other journal. In case in the online system if the status is under review, you can still wait. In my case the review process took almost one year

Thanks Kulasekaran Ramesh , the status is "Decision Started" for more than 3 months.

Dear Mahdi,

salaam Ostad,

I hope you are doing well!

I guess if the status if the paper is under review, then i would still wait for one more month.

If the status of the paper is not not under review, or has not been under review for more than 2 months, then i would write to the respected regional Editor of the journal with a cc to the Editor of Chief.

I hope this helps!

Kind regards

Elyas

Dear Elyas Ghafoori

Nice to see you here!

As I discussed earlier, the status is "Decision Started" for more than 3 months without any change. I have sent many emails to the editor, without any response.

There would not be any problem if the editor responded even one!

Au revoir mon ami!