Q: The status of my manuscript is 'With journal office.' What does it mean?

When you submit your manuscript to a journal, it is first handled by an associate editor/the journal’s administrative personnel who evaluates your manuscript for its scope-match, suitability to the readership of the journal, quality and other ethical issues. The status ‘With journal office’ means that your manuscript is at this stage and has not yet passed the initial editorial screening to be sent for a peer-review.

Please try to find out the peer-review time or time from submission to first decision of the journal that you have submitted to. While some journals have this information on their website, others do not. For the initial evaluation, the time taken depends up on factors like the number of manuscripts received by the journal a particular point of time, the staff available to handle your manuscript and the priority of your manuscript to that journal.

Since it has been 50 days after submission, I would suggest that you write to the journal’s editor to inquire about the status of your manuscript and request the editor to let you know by when you can expect to receive a decision. Accordingly, you can take the next steps and even consider withdrawing your paper if you feel it's going to take too long. Please read some of the links given below to know more about how to contact/write to a journal editor.

Related reading:

• How to proceed if my paper is not assigned to an editor?
• What should I do if my paper is showing "With editor" for two months?
• What is the meaning of the status "With managing editor search"?
• Can I inquire with the editorial office if my manuscript's status hasn't changed for 5 months?
• How to communicate with the journal editor