https://www.scm.nomos.de/index.php?id=2448&L=1

One of my colleague had a sign on his office door that read: "How do you want it, good, fast, or cheap? You can pick two."

This is the same sort of question. The best journals (which you should be targeting), of course want to have rapid review, but any journal advertising super fast review time is probably not worth publishing in because it is predatory or unranked. Comm. Theory is not computer science or medicine where publication takes place immediately and review afterwards. There are no "fast," "free," "peer reviewed" articles in the field of communication theory. Nor should there be, comm theory is not an area that is time sensitive and a credible review process takes time.

"Free" and "peer review" mean it will take a reasonable amount of time for a proper review by qualified academics. Typically, 90 days is a reasonable review. The editor gets your submission, and maybe takes a week or even two to get to it—what with having a job and not getting paid to be a full time editor. S/he then invites reviewers. Who typically take from a few days to a month to accept because when we do not respond immediately the article disappears in email, and the editor has to remind us in a week or two. So now, in a perfect world, you are up to two weeks, but more realistically, 3–4 weeks. The reviewer then typically has 30 days to do his/her review, but in these days of pandemic, overwork, etc. most people are a month late or more. So eight weeks in now. However, often, a reviewer takes two weeks to answer, says no, and the editor has to ask another person (or two). So realistically, you are now at nine or ten weeks. Some reviewers, however, take two months or more to complete a review.

Finally, once the reviews are in, the editor has to review them and make a decision, and then send you a letter. In most cases probably R&R if the article has merit, and then the ball is in your court. But if you are unfortunate, it took 2–3 months for you to get a reject.

So a "fast" (not really fast, but faster than some) "good" journal is three months for the review process, another 4–6 weeks for R&R, and then another two weeks for a decision. So five months or more before it gets slated for publication. If you are lucky, that can happen fast, in a week, but sometimes that takes 4–6 weeks.

The fastest article I have ever had published in a credible journal was probably five or six months from submission to online. However, I have had several that took 12–18 months or more and four rounds of revisions. I do comm. theory, BTW also.

ALL NCA (National Communication Association), ICA (International Comm. Assoc.), US Regionals (Eastern, Southern, etc.), the Atlantic J of C, and others are free to publish in. Open Access is an option with most journals in the field, but then there are almost certainly going to be publication fees if you want your article to be open access.

As to their speed, most articles are going to be 6–9 months from submission to publication. From what I head from the Elsevier team, most journals are running a few months slower because of Covid now.

Hope this helps.

MLK

Michael L. Kent thank you! My article is a review/analysis piece that talks about the effects that covid has had on first amendment theories and how they will need to develop moving forward. I am looking for a free Open access journal that is relatively quick (6-8 months) because I will be focusing on my dissertation in 6 months.

https://ooir.org/journals.php?category=communication

Hope this will help you