About a year ago I submitted a paper to a very good math journal. After 10 months I asked the editor for its status, and he said it is still with the referee, and that he will remind him about it.
Two more months have passed. Should/could I write the editor again? or am I risking annoying the editor/referee? How much time should I wait between such inquires?
As an editor of a number of mathematics journals, I would be pretty irritated to receive two queries from an author within two months. What exactly is achieved by emailing a journal to ask for an update in the first place? Mostly, it helps on the (perhaps not so rare) occasion where the paper has fallen through the cracks, as happens when someone agrees to review the paper but then forgets about it. What would be achieved by emailing the journal twice in two months? It's hard to imagine it resulting in your paper being reviewed any sooner, and easy to imagine it annoying the editor. I would wait six months between queries.
If it has been an entire year, then I think you are well within your rights to enquire about the status of your paper. You have been remarkably patient.
Does the journal publish metrics on time-to-publication? Can you work it out from looking at the submission dates of articles published in the most recent edition?
If 12 months is unusual for this particular journal then something is not going as it should, and in the least the editor should keep you informed.
