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When to inquire about a paper under review?

In our new “how can we help you?” thread, a reader asks:

If a paper is taking a longish time (say, more than 3 months) at a journal, is there any point in sending an email inquiry as the author? I assume that the reviewers are being slow and that the editors are sending reminders. I also assume that there’s nothing the editors can really do to speed up reviewers that they are not already doing. Suppose I’m not considering retracting my submission (yet), is there any point in sending an inquiry?

I recall when discussing this in the past, readers suggested it can be reasonable to send an inquiry after 3 or 4 months. But, like the OP, I’m not sure whether there’s a point to it. Then again, I’ve also heard stories of papers getting “lost” at journals from time to time, so maybe it couldn’t hurt?

What do readers think?

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6 responses to “When to inquire about a paper under review?”

  1. Sam Elgin

    I think it is perfectly reasonable—and sometimes helpful—to contact journals after waiting a sufficient amount of time. What counts as “sufficient” varies journal by journal. The Journal of Philosophy, for example, only provides reviewer reports after six months, so I personally would not reach out to them before then. More generally, if a journal says something like “we aim to get a decision to authors within X months,” I would wait until a while after X—perhaps another month—before inquiring.

    That said, I have found that inquiries can help. Once, I could see on the manuscript website that the reviewer reports had been in for a month. After I wrote to the editor, I had a decision within two days. I cannot be certain, but my best guess is that the reports had simply been sitting in a backlog, and the email nudged the editor to look them over. Quite recently, I reached out to another journal to ask for an update, and the editor replied that they had thought they had sent the reports some time ago, but a glitch meant that I never received them. In both cases, contacting the editor seems to have had a material effect.

    In other cases, an inquiry may not speed things up, but it can still provide peace of mind. I have received replies along the lines of: “We have one reviewer report in, and a second reviewer has just agreed; we hope to have a decision within two months.” That sort of response does not necessarily accelerate the process, but it does help set expectations.

    The main caution is not to reach out too early. For most journals, I personally would not inquire right at the three-month mark; that is still a fairly normal turnaround time. But once the review has gone noticeably beyond the journal’s stated or typical timeframe, I think a polite inquiry is entirely reasonable and can sometimes make a real difference.

    Reply
    1. Anon

      I disagree. 3 months is the standard time to check in unless the journal says the try to get a decision in eg 4 months. It also helps because you can check to make sure the paper didn’t fall through the cracks. If it has fallen through the cracks, then less time is wasted.

      Reply
  2. Anonymous

    It really depends. Some systems allow you to somewhat guess what’s going on. So, for example, if the paper remains a “new submission” like waiting to be assigned to an editor or something like that, it may be worth prompting after a month. The same for being assigned to editors, and not being sent to external reviews. Two recent publications of mine both advanced to the next stages after asking, including revisions not being sent out to reviewers and having all reviews in but no verdict after 1.5 months or so.

    Sometimes I get radio silence or immediate rejections though.

    Reply
  3. AGT

    I am of the opinion that it is perfectly reasonable to inquire after 3-4 months. Most journals these days give us, as reviewers, a month or so to do the review, so the discrepancy is evident. While it is of course often the case that the reviewer is late and the journal might have complicated decision processes, this fact alone seems nonetheless sufficient ground to ask. Why not? In what sense would it be counterproductive? They will reject the paper because we dared to bother them? Hopefully, we are not there yet (and if a journal operates like this, one should not submit there, in my view). If the journal does not answer, well, so be it, but that is hardly a major damage…

    Reply
  4. Corvus splendens

    Inclined to agree with the broad consensus of 3-4 months, plus or minus special cases where journals are known/advertise that they will take longer.

    Worries about reviewers taking longer than they ought shouldn’t come in to the author’s reasoning, I think, since a reviewer not reporting back is one of the things that an editor can realise upon being prodded and potentially do something about. (Anecdotally, the one time I chased and it became apparent that it was reviewer 2 blowing through their deadline that was the holdup, I received a prompt rejection on the basis of a single report. But, given that I doubt a second report would have saved me and could have taken ages longer either way, I considered this a good result once I’d stopped sulking.)

    Reply
  5. Daniel

    It would be bad if we transitioned to a system where, in order to get any paper published, you had to bug the journal once, or twice, or three times, etc. This would be annoying for everyone involved. I worry that the “reach out after 3-4 months” norm helps move us closer to that sort of system, if only ever so slightly. It allows journals not to enact practices that catch papers that fall through the cracks, since they can just rely on the author to catch them. Journals can thus start letting more and more papers fall through the cracks without worrying this will mess things up too much.

    Probably my worry is silly. Journals are already in a position to treat authors however they want, so perhaps they’re indifferent between papers falling through the cracks or not. But maybe this is food for thought.

    With the exception of papers I’ve co-written, where my co-author wanted me to reach out, I think the only time I’ve ever reached out to ask about the status of a paper is when 1 year had gone by with no update from the journal. I have two papers coming up on the 1 year anniversary soon (in August) and I’ll probably reach out to ask about them. So, going by my own practices, I’d say wait a year before asking anything. But maybe I am being too stingy.

    For the record, here are some journals that got back to me after 3-4 months or more without any prompting on my part, such that my reaching out after 3-4 months would have been a waste of time for me and for them: The Journal of Value Inquiry, Analytic Philosophy, The Philosophical Quarterly, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, Social Theory and Practice, the Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, Res Publica, Moral Philosophy and Politics, Hypatia, Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Thought, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, the Southern Journal of Philosophy, Philosophers’ Imprint, and Pacific Philosophical Quarterly.

    Reply

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