I have submitted a paper to IEEE transactions on knowledge and data engineering (TKDE). Until now, it has been 7 months and the status of my paper is still "Under Review". It has stayed in the same status from the first day of the submission. I have sent an email to the admin of the journal, and she replied to me that the paper was being processed. I have waited more than 1 month without any update.
Has anyone experienced the same situation? What should I do? Many thanks.
Plenty of people have experienced the same situation. See e.g.
Submission review is taking too long
I submitted a paper five months ago. Should I wait a little bit more for a response?
14 months waiting for first review time to go elsewhere?
In general: ask the editor pointed questions about what's happening to your paper. They might not be able to tell you when the reviews will be available, but they should be able to say things like "we've invited 4 reviewers of which 2 have declined". Ask them for that information, and perhaps when the review due dates are as well. With this information you can make educated guesses about how much longer it'll take to review your paper. If there's no sign at all that the article is being reviewed, then consider withdrawing and submitting your manuscript elsewhere.
