A year + for first review, one referee report in, want to withdraw paper A paper of mine has been under review for more than a year now. About 6 months ago I heard from the journal that one referee report is in while they are waiting for the 2nd. The editor promised he would get in touch with the Associate Editor to speed up the process.

In any case, nothing has happened until now.

I am thinking of withdrawing the paper citing excessively long review times. Could I ask for the one review that the journal received on my paper?

What is a good way to frame the withdrawal email with the request for the journal office to be kind enough to share at least the single referee's report they received?
I actually had a similar situation some years ago. I don't think my experience is very useful, but I will briefly recap it in any case.

I submitted a paper to a journal in October 2009. In April 2010, after several requests, I was told that one referee had given a report, and the journal was still waiting on the second report. The journal then sent me the report at that time (in April), though I gather that was not standard procedure, and as far as I can see, I did not explicitly ask for it, though I had been repeatedly asking for feedback of any kind. The journal wrote:


  In fact, we got a report from the first referee. The referee's opinion
  is rather negative. As a rule, we do not send a negative report before
  we get a report from the second referee. Taking into account your
  will, we send the first referee report to you - please find it below.
  
  SInce we have not yet got the second referee report, 
  there is no editorial decision concerning your paper.
  We hope to receive the second referee report in April.


I don't know exactly what was meant by "taking into account your will".

The second report never arrived, and I withdrew my paper in September 2010, slightly less than a year after submitting it.

I suggest that you ask your journal for the one report. You might want to wait on withdrawing it till you hear what the report says. You could say that you would like to use the first report to improve the paper while waiting for the second.

If they refuse, I guess you could then say that you are withdrawing the paper, and then ask for the report again. If you are going to withdraw the paper, this marks the end of the process from the journal's point of view, and I don't see why they would refuse feedback that might help you. Of course, they might refuse regardless. I imagine that individual journals would have different policies about such things.