Hi everyone
I have been quite distressed about this --
I submitted a paper seven months ago to a journal --and only today I have heard from the editor (and that is because I emailed them to ask-- my emails have always been really polite) -- that they are still waiting for reviewer's comments. Is seven months too long? What if I change my mind and want to submit elsewhere, how can I retract my submission then? Or should I just sit and wait? what should I do? I just feel like I can't move forward, I know we are supposed to do other things and write other papers, but I still can't get past this long long long wait.

Thanks
love satchi

Seven months is not too long,sometimes I have waited as long as a year. You are not allowed to submit your paper anywhere else while it is under review. It's difficult but you just have to put it to the back of your mind for now and work on other things :)

It's always a good idea to check publication times of previous papers before choosing a journal. You can find this on the journal website or by looking at the publication history on the papers.

In science, 7 months is way too long. Reviewer turn around should be within 1 month generally.

I have the same situation as yours. I sumbitted my paper in August last year. It is still under review. I dont know why it takes so long. Sometimes i think if the reviewers dont like my work, they should reject it immediately. I can submit it to another journal. But now i am stuck here.

Mind you if its a free journal it might take up to or less than a year before the accepted manuscript get published. So be patient.

Hi Satchi,

Can take a really long time. I submitted a paper in April, 2015, and it was accepted beginning of February, 2016. This did include one round of minor revisions. So I heard back in Aug 2015 to do minor revisions, submitted in October, and then didn't hear back again until Feb.

Social sciences, especially qualitative can take aaaaaages to come back, whereas I found when I submitted a paper to a health journal, it was only a two month turnaround with a major revision decision (which were really not that difficult at all).

Between 6-9 months. I submitted one in December and the status still reads 'awaiting reviewer allocation' so it is not even with the reviewers after 4 months. One journal took 9 months to get back to me with a 'reject' but it was returned with reviewer comments.

thank you so much for replying to my question. I still feel frustrated, though, it's like a state of helplessness -- we are at the mercy of journal editors/reviewers.

I honestly think anything more than three months is just awful. It's like common courtesy, if they don't like the work, they should quickly tell us off so we can move on.

if I have any good news to come about this, I'll post back.
thanks
love satchi