Article submission

[SpindleFibre]

Looking for advice about article submission. I submitted a paper in January to a well known health related journal. The journal's author guidelines state that authors should expect a response within 8 weeks. I have heard nothing, not even an acknowledgement that they have recieved it. Surely a standard email acknowledging receipt would be good manners?

I totally understand that it can take several months for them to make a final decision due to the peer review process. I emailed them last week and have had no response. Is this normal? Obviously I am unable to submit the article elsewhere until I have had a response. Should I phone them or wait a few more weeks?

The last time I had a paper published was many years ago when it was all done via the post. It was also a different journal. I genuinely can't remember the response time then.

Any advice welcome. Thanks.

I’m in the Humanities and have waited anywhere between 6 weeks and 11 months—but I have always got an acknowledgment. I’d at least email them to check.

Thank you historyrocks. I don't want to keep pestering them but I hate the uncertainty. I will definitely submit to a different journal next time.

This is ridiculous. Receipt should be acknowledged quickly. I suggest that you contact an administrator, if their contact details are available, or the Managing Editor if you cannot find a lower level person to ask.

Everyone is overworked right now but papers should either be rejected by the editor, if that is consistent with journal policy, or go out to the first referees within a couple of weeks. Authors are notified of receipt and this disposition. There may be an online system for this: have you checked? You may even be able to track the paper’s progress.

Personal circumstances could cause delay but not by four months. The most likely explanation is carelessness but there is also the question of priority. Did you post your preprint to a public forum and otherwise circulate it?

Thank you for replying. This journal does not have the online submission process that I have seen elsewhere. I initially emailed a junior editor asking if the journal accepts a particular type of of article; she responded immediately and asked me to submit it to her and said she would discuss it with her editor the following week. So I emailed it to her and got no acknowledgement. Several weeks later I sent a query to another email address at the journal to check it had been recieved (in case the junior editor had left or was off sick) and again no reply.

Last week I emailed the first contact again....and guess what....no reply.

I check my Spam mail every day too just in case. Very frustrating.

I have not submitted it to any public forums. I'm not sure what you mean by question of priority?

My gut feeling is to email the editor to say you are withdrawing the submission & promptly submit it elsewhere. Why would you stick with a journal that is so weird?

2nd choice is to find their online submission system (can't believe they don't have one) and query formally through there. Or even formally submit.

You're being messed about but might be unpredictable circumstances (your editor died or something).

Having tried two email addresses with no reply, I agree with @MedSchoolRat that the best thing is to withdraw the paper and submit elsewhere.

It is odd that the journal appears to have no online submission system. If it does, the fact that the first editor asked you to submit to her directly would seem a bit weird. With the journals I know, transparency is one of the virtues of online submission: the author can see when the paper goes out for refereeing, then all subsequent steps to rejection or publication.

I still think carelessness the most likely cause. It is always possible both of your contacts have had personal crises, or a journal lacking online submission is going under. But someone I trust who was in situ told me of a well respected editor in my field (who my source had regarded as a role model) who either lost or ‘lost’ an important submission and did not find or ‘find’ it until he, the editor, had substantially improved upon the result and submitted his own paper to one of the most prestigious journals in the world. It does happen, although most people are honest and have their own priorities

Publicity is your best insurance. Posting to public forums is easy and powerful, as well as being good for science.