Q: My paper has been under review for almost three months. What should I do?

You have not mentioned when you submitted the manuscript and what were the statuses before this. If there have been other statuses such as "With Editor" or "Reviewer Assigned" before the current status, then you can be rest assured that your paper has gone for peer review. Peer review can take several months. However, I would suggest that you send an inquiry to the journal as this will serve as a gentle reminder to the editor and can speed up the review process.

If however, the paper has been showing the status "Under review" from the time of submission, without any other status change, then it could mean that your paper is still under the initial admin check by the journal and has not yet been assigned to an Editor or reviewer. In any case, you should definitely send a polite inquiry to the journal asking for a status update.

Related reading:

• What to do if the status on the ScholarOne system is "Under review" for over 4 months?
• How long will the status of my paper show "Under Review?"