I think that it IS true, as a rule of thumb, that very fast approval and publication times should raise suspicion that the journal may be predatory.

On the other hand, long reviews MAY signal quality...or may signal lack of organization. My longest wait for review was because a journal editor did not find qualified reviewers for months.

But one of my top five papers, in terms of numbers of citations, was another long review with more than one re-submission, and apparently different reviewers each time. That was painful, but worth it in the long run. :-)

I think that it IS true, as a rule of thumb, that very fast approval and publication times should raise suspicion that the journal may be predatory.

On the other hand, long reviews MAY signal quality...or may signal lack of organization. My longest wait for review was because a journal editor did not find qualified reviewers for months.

But one of my top five papers, in terms of numbers of citations, was another long review with more than one re-submission, and apparently different reviewers each time. That was painful, but worth it in the long run. :-)

Thanks... Micheal W. Marek. Generally, as a reviewer for many scientific journal, I make it a personal standard to return my assessment to journal not later than a week after accepting to review any paper. In fact, i had returned an assessment for a manuscript the same day it was sent to me. It just that we have many predatory Journal which makes good intentions like this faulty. However, i strongly believe a paper can enjoy good review in very short time. What matters is the commitment of the editorial team members and the reviewer not necessarily the time. Hence, even if i have a "quick" review (as i always wish for), i still consider the comment and us my intuition to judge if the comment are reliable help improve the quality of my manuscript.

I recently had a case that they have forgotten about my paper submission😦, so the long reciew period can mean many things...

Exactly my school of thought too @Mirna Leko-Simic. As a personal rule of thumb, i send a "gentle reminder" to editors every two weeks about my submission, just to avoid such incident. I recently had a terrible experience with a journal hosted by Elsevier. The status was "Ready for decision" for a period of one month. After sending a reminder, i got to know that the journal had some problems with the website hence, editors could not assess the platform. I concluded "constant correspondence" on once submission can go a long way to reduce the time of review. But i still maintain that the time of review do not always dictate the quality of the review process.

Up to some extent, this is true. But I think it is not a good approach to wait for such long time (as you mentioned four years) assuming that this long time of review means the high quality of journal. There are some other factors which demonstrates the quality/level of journal e.g. indexing, impact factor. The review process also depends on the number of issues a journal have in a year. Journals with more number of issues 6+ normally reply within few months as compared to journals with less number of issues.

Very valid points @Jawad Abbas. It is true that patronising established Journal with many issues and Volumes is great. And a good "quick" test of quality. However, sometimes this approach may be dangerous for new/upcoming journal with potential to be excellent too. This has been the reason for a shot down of Journals after a few years or even months of launch. I personally believe that reseachers contribution "make up" a Journal's quality and not the Journal "big" name. Hence, as a general rule, am more focus on the quality of my work than the quality of the journals. A good work will always stand out even when published in a bad Journal. However, a bad work would not get patronage or citation even if it's published in "Nature". I patronise new journal especially when they are indexed on scopus. And believe me, the review time are way shorter than others cuz of lesser considered manuscripts.

there are cases of reviewer's fatigue who declined and the editor has to invite other reviewers

Well , it depends on the length it takes to get a paper published. Six months to one year period is ok. But in cases where a paper comes out in a few weeks or months, the journals credibility is seriously questioned. Journals taking years to publish a paper , on the other hand, have a serious problems with their processes and policy which has bad effects on the journals‘ reliability.

I am more concerned about a review taking too long, especially if the journal is ranked as a Q1 journal by SJR. In my experience, this is often a result of poor editorial management. Each time that reviews have taken a year or more, I've written to the respective journal, only to get the full reviews the following day and a note of apology. In one particular case, however, I submitted an article almost five years ago now, the editors changed, neither editor (current or previous) ever returned any of my emails, and I have still never heard a thing (a very well known journal in my field). As a result, I have since published the paper in another Q1 journal and refuse to submit anything else to that journal and always advise against my PhD students submitting anything there. It's not worth putting yourself through that ridiculous lack of management when there are so many other journals run well.

No , we cant

there is no relation between length of review and quality of the journal or review as many factors play a role here e.g. difficulty to find reviewer, busy reviewer that made them late , busy editors, .....

In my openion , Go to your aim in a proper manner and conised review