In general, papers are attributed by the editors to anonymous referees within 2 days max. After that, the management board cannot do anything else but wait for the answer of the referee. First, the ref has one week to accept or decline. Then he has one month to complete the job. But if he doesn't, he may have 15 days more. If he still doesn't do the job, then the editor looks for another referee and so on. Sometimes, two referees are not enough (e.g. one accept and the other reject). In that case, the editor will submit to one or two other referees.

"journals should quickly reject any paper so that the authors can afford to try in any other journals.. So, what do you think?"

if you really want to find (very quickly) the answer... launch a journal

3 to 6 months would be ideal, I have had problems passing nine months and you know nothing, you write to the editor to ask and they do not answer, talk on the phone and tell you that within a certain time and you get a response expires within and without your knowing anything.

The major hurdle to a paper being published are the reviewers and not anyone connected with the journal. Given that these are unpaid individuals its difficult to get them to reviewing papers their top priority. To deal with this issue I believe that a rating system for reviewers can identify those that excel in their quality and speed of their reviews. Let me know of your thoughts on this suggestion

Well,,, some journal editors even don't bother to respond even after a year or more.. This is not good..yes time limit must be there

Ninety days is a reasonable maximum between submission and response from the journal. Within this interval, editors must obtain reliable reviews from qualified peers, and guided by these readings and their own independent evaluations, provide a response to the author(s). Inquiry to the journal beyond 90 days is appropriate for clarification of status. Also, when a submission occasionally becomes inadvertently sidetracked, such inquiries are valuable to the journal to stimulate the process of evaluation.

Yes Fred you are quite right

Neil Wang: Then what do you think, shouldn't there be any standardized time limit for the acceptance or rejection of the article? If there is any time limit, then the reviewers will be more careful about taking any article for reviewing knowing that he/she has give comment withing a specified time. Otherwise, they now receive articles and then review it at there will as there is no time bound.

Zsolt Török: It is not about launching a journal. Scientists are recognized via their good publications through good journals and also the journals get popularity through good publications of the scientists. So, journals should respect the scientists.

Igor Moshynskyy : I know about a lot of famous articles which are the works of some pdh researcher. Do you think phd research or post doc. research work are not actual research? Then who does the so called actual research? All the institute pay to their researcher for their research. And research works are researchers' career.

Renaldo Belfon: I totally agree with you.

Fred Utter : Well, sir, ninety days, even 180 days seems ok. But its really frustrating when you do not get response in one year or even more. And the authors remain in complete darkness. And now, even some very good journals take too long to respond. Even the editor do not simply reply to query. What do you think about the rating of reviewers? Is this could be a partial solution?

Md. Mosaddequr Rahman: "It is not about launching a journal."

It is, because it would have been interesting to find out if You, for example, would have established (from the start) the period which will be between the manuscript submission dead-line and the printing date of the respective issue.

For example, in case of the journal published by our institute, the dead-line for manuscript submission is February 15th, and the volume (of that year) is printed in the first half of September. Of course, this dates are valid in case of the manuscripts that passed the formal (technical aspects) revision (this ends at April 15th) and the scientific revision (this ends at June 15th).

So the authors are aware that the on-line version will be available after 4 months, meanwhile the printed version is available at about 7 months after the manuscript submission dead-line...

Sorry, Dr. Zsolt Török, as far as I understand the Mosaddequr Md. Rahman, refers the time it takes to tell the author if the article is accepted or rejected, not even when it is published. Sometimes it takes more than a year without knowing the author if your item is considered or not in the magazine.

Whereas the authors are researchers, teach, advise students who have, in addition to reviewing articles for a magazine believe that 3 months (190 days) would be ideal.

Monica Galicia: "as far as I understand the Mosaddequr Md. Rahman, refers the time it takes to tell the author if the article is accepted or rejected, not even when it is published."

Well, the publishers/publishing houses usually have at least an idea about the length of the manuscript-revision process.

Those that haven't got any clue when will be completed the reviewing probably will loose those authors who write good articles that increase the quality of the journal.

Igor Moshynskyy: " sorting out worthy publications from those submitted only because they are "necessary for their career, degree, scholarship or other reasons" may take time "

yeah, that's true... but the problem (related to the "necessary for the carrier" articles) is of other type: people are publishing when they do not have anything to tell in the respective issue/subject, the target being the ("necessary") number of works or (more recently) the sum of ISIs from various articles

the "nicest" cases are those when, based on (practically) the same data you can find several articles published in different journals, by the same team of authors (very often in different order of authorship) - in best case, eventually, using just slightly different statistical analyses...

p.s. just for the sake of an example: as the articles on the feeding of a frog-species nearby village X, than feeding of the same species in village Y, than in the area between the village X and Y, than in the valley that includes villages X and village Y and the area between the two villages, followed by another publication in which are shown the results of the studies on the feeding of the same frog in the hilly area where there is the valley with the two villages...

For most journals, peer reviews remain anonymous to the authors unless signed. Journal editors, who know the reviewer identities, rate (or weigh) the value of reviews and communicate the relevant points and weight of each review to the authors. Through this process, the editors are rating the reviewers in the sense that particularly weak or highly biased reviews will lead to future avoidance of such reviewers.

The author has the right to withdraw a submitted manuscript at any time prior to assigning the copyright of the accepted version to the journal. Such withdrawal and resubmission elsewhere seems particularly appropriate if communication with the journal cannot be made beyond 90 days after submission.

Well, yes, the author has the right to withdraw his submitted article if he/she don't get response from the journal. But then what, s/he needs to resubmit the article into another journal and what if the same thing happens??? There many good journals now taking a lot of time before accepting or rejecting a paper.

Feedback from the journal mainly depends on the comments of the reviewers. And reviewing articles still a voluntary activity (in most cases). The reviewers probably review the articles only when they are free from their routine life.. This probably one reason behind delayed response from the journals. However, there is another discussion going on whether the reviewing of articles should remain voluntary or not...

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Do_you_think_reviewing_scientific_articles_should_remain_voluntary_or_should_the_reviewers_be_paid_by_the_publishers

Three months would be a reasonable time frame. We found that reviewers tend to follow a set time frame when we have a sliding scale for reviewer incentive. We use this for the review process of Pertanika journals for example the Pertanika Journal of Tropical Agricultural Science.