Q: What should I do if my submission is still awaiting an editor assignment and the journal editor hasn't replied to my mail?

Detailed Question -

I submitted to the journal Applied Intelligence on May 4. It has now been more than two weeks since then, but the status is still ‘Editor Assignment Pending.’ I emailed the journal editor on May 19, but got no reply. What should I do next?

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

If you visit the home page of Applied Intelligence (a Springer journal) here, and scroll/swipe to where the journal metrics are provided, you will see a metric for the number of days from ‘Submission to first decision’ too. This says 18 days, which is usually working days and not weekdays. So, technically, it has been 15 days. Of course, they may be facing some challenges assigning an editor, but that could be an internal matter. So, you will need to wait for some more days, say, the end of this week, to see a status change.

As you’ve already written to the editor once, you needn’t write to them again for, say, two weeks. If of course things haven’t changed until then, you could write again asking about the status. If needed, you could mention the metric provided on the site. Additionally, you could say that you are quite eager to know the status and/or outcome of your manuscript, as it no doubt has an academic/professional impact.

In the rare case that they don’t reply to your mails, you may consider withdrawing and submitting your manuscript elsewhere. If so, do keep in mind all the necessary points for withdrawing and submitting elsewhere, as provided in this resource: Should I withdraw my paper if the journal is taking unusually long to process?

Apart from that, you may also find the following resources helpful:

All the best for whatever comes next!