I submitted a paper five months ago. Should I wait a little bit more for a response? I submitted a paper to a journal five months ago. The status of the paper was 'With Editor' for the first three months. After three months from my submission, I sent the journal a polite enquiry about my submission. I did not receive any reply, however, the status of the paper changed from 'With Editor' to 'Under Review' less than 24 hours after I sent my enquiry.

It has been two more months now, and I still have not received anything back. What should I do? I am assuming that the editor has forgotten about my paper, then when he or she received the reminder, sent it to a few people for review. In which case, I was going to wait another month, then enquire about my paper again. Is this too conservative? I would love to get a reply, as this paper is part of my forthcoming PhD thesis which I'm about to submit soon.
It differs case by case, but journals take a while before acceptance and publishing. Once I waited a year for a high ranking journal! You can always contact the editor and ask about the status of your journal.

Advice On Your Thesis and Submitted Material: You can definitely cite the submitted material within your thesis. Don't forget to add the (Submitted to X) at the end of the citation.