Remove submission during review I submitted a paper to an Elsevier journal which is now in 'Submitted to Journal status'. Now I want to remove it to improve the write up, though the content is good. I don't want it to be rejected after waiting for 7 months which would be a lot of time wasted. I would rather remove it now and improve it  myself or with the help of editing services. Should I email editor to remove it?  I am worried because the reasons for withdrawals mentioned on their website are serious and I don't want to give that impression when my reasons is just to improve the manuscript. 

When you feel your paper does not have high chances to get accepted, do you keep on working on it during the review and re-submit to a different journal when it gets rejected eventually? Or remove it immediately, work on it and submit again.
“When you feel your paper do not have high chances to get accepted”… then I suggest you don't submit it for publication in the first place!

It has happened that I have submitted a work which I continued to work on improving, but it was definitely in some very specific cases, where


the improvement in question was nice but absolutely not crucial to the paper,
had no impact an any of the conclusions of the paper,
I was not sure the improvement would actually work.


Basically, something like submitting the paper while continuing to tinker on Figure 2, thinking without adding or removing any data there might be a better way to present it, but it required getting a new software license and learning how to use it. Or submitting a paper while thinking that “hey, this is totally publishable, but if I continue running the simulation while the paper is submitted, maybe I can get the curve on Figure 3 with a little bit less noise”. But nothing as extensive as changing the text.



What should you do now? — Well, if you think reworking on the paper can in a significant way improve its chances of being accepted, I suggest you withdraw it from consideration. If you submitted not too long ago, the editor and referees might not even have wasted much time on it yet. So write to the editor, apologetically explaining that you've realized you made a mistake in submitting your paper too early, and would like to withdraw it. It's not a very nice thing to do, but I still believe it's in your interest.