I'm about to graduate college and this is my first time submitting a manuscript and I need some guidance because my PI has been busy with his grant. I submitted my manuscript to Behavioral sleep medicine since January and it has been sitting with the editor and did not enter the peer review process. I thought this was a great journal because of their metrics.
I found out it was a lie. When I looked them up on PubMed I noticed only 40 papers got published in the last year which is really small compared to other journals even during COVID-19. I emailed the journal multiple times about a time frame and they copied and pasted this same message twice "I do apologize, but I have no further information at this time. The editor is working diligently to get decisions out as soon as possible."
I'm about to graduate and I feel like I won’t have time to work in this journal and neither would my coauthors and I was wondering what I should do. I worked on this project for 6 years straight from undergrad to grad. Should I withdraw and submit it to sleep health?