My paper has been sitting with the editor without peer review, and the journal is not responding. What should I do? I'm about to graduate college and this is my first time submitting a manuscript and I need some guidance because my PI has been busy with his grant. I submitted my manuscript to Behavioral sleep medicine since January and it has been sitting with the editor and did not enter the peer review process.
I thought this was a great journal because of their metrics.
I found out it was a lie. When I looked them up on PubMed I noticed only 40 papers got published in the last year which is really small compared to other journals even during COVID-19.
I emailed the journal multiple times about a time frame and they copied and pasted this same message twice &quot;I do apologize, but I have no further information at this time. The editor is working diligently to get decisions out as soon as possible.&quot;
I'm about to graduate and I feel like I won’t have time to work in this journal and neither would my coauthors and I was wondering what I should do. I worked on this project for 6 years straight from undergrad to grad. Should I withdraw and submit it to sleep health?
The average length of time that it takes for a manuscript to work its way through the submission/review process can vary from one discipline to the next, and I'm not really sure what that would be for yours. Coming from my own experience in the humanities, I would normally expect an editor to take no longer than a month to get a manuscript out to reviewers. Of course, there are a number of legitimate reasons for delays, such as an editor having a hard time securing reviewers (or getting reviewers who end up backing out or are unresponsive to an editor's request for evaluations).
That said, I do think that a case such as yours seems unprofessional. You've reached out and haven't received any specific explanation for the delay and the response doesn't even seem to align with your situation (you mention that your manuscript hasn't been sent out for peer review, yet they mention that they're working on sending decisions out...) I would probably send another email indicating that I'd like to withdraw my submission. However, if you have co-authors on this paper, do not do so without consulting them first. I would also copy them in this email if they are also OK with withdrawing.