Special Issue Guest Editor's Guide

Once your proposal has been approved by the Editor-in-Chief, the Journal Development Team will set up the call for papers for your special issue based on the information that was submitted through the submission system. You will receive a communication from journal development when your call for papers is effectively set up, so you as the guest editor can begin to distribute this call to your personal contacts as well as various listservs to gather contributions for this issue. Your call for papers will include the following sections:

• Title
• Submission Deadline
• Guest Editors (name and affiliation)
• Introduction—Introduce the topic area and discuss why there is a particular need for this special issue
• Objective—Describe the overall objective of the issue. What purpose will it serve?
• Recommended Topics—Include a list of topics (we recommend 20-30) under the umbrella of your main topic on which you would like contributors to write.
• Funding Source Recognition (if applicable)
• Guest Editor’s Contact Information

A good call for papers will be both concise and detailed to provide a clear overview of the project’s focus and goals.

Sample Special Issue Call for Papers

• Step 1: Distributing Your Call for Papers
• Step 2: Initial Assessment
• Step 3: Preparing Manuscripts for Review

In the first phase of the development process, you will be recruiting contributors and gathering the articles and materials that will appear in your special issue. The following steps will be performed on each manuscript, with the whole process managed through the Current Manuscripts page within eEditorial Discovery®^TM.

Active Phase: Submission

Your special issue may focus on bringing together research papers on a particular topic or theme, or you may already have papers in mind based on research that was recently presented at conferences, symposiums, workshops, etc. Regardless of the shape your special issue will take, it is important to distribute your call for papers widely to gather as many unique and quality contributions as possible.

For more information, see Step 1 of the Journal Editor’s Guide.

Active Phase: Initial Assessment

Papers submitted to your special issue will be displayed with the title of your special issue above the manuscript title. This is to distinguish your submissions from general submissions to the journal. As the guest editor for this issue, you will only be able to view and process submissions to your special issue.

For more information, see Step 2 of the Journal Editor’s Guide.

Active Phase: Remove Identifying Information

While the submission process through eEditorial Discovery®^TM enables authors to submit a manuscript free of personal or identifying information, it is important to ensure that the copy of the manuscript you send to your Editorial Review Board is completely anonymous, to preserve the crucial double-anonymized review process.

Before sending a manuscript to your editorial board for review, check the document carefully for information such as the authors’ names, affiliations, and bios. Remove all information that identifies the authors of the manuscript, and save a blind copy of the paper for review.

In the second phase of the development process, you will be organizing the double-anonymized peer review process for manuscripts submitted to your special issue. These are some of the most important steps in the development process, as it is your opportunity to evaluate the quality of each article submited, ensuring that only the very best papers are selected for publication.

• Step 4: Manuscript Evaluation by Editorial Review Board Members
• Step 5: Associate Editor Review
• Step 6: Manuscript Revision

Active Phase: Select and Contact Editorial Review Board Evaluators

Active Phase: Assess and Approve Editorial Review Board Evaluations

When you are ready to assign a manuscript to reviewers, you will have two options. First, you may draw reviewers from the journal’s existing Editorial Review Board. Alternatively, many guest editors provide their own ad-hoc reviewers, which can be assigned to a manuscript using the Request new reviewers field. Note that any ad-hoc reviewers you add will be automatically made available in the journal’s existing pool of ad-hoc reviewers.

Please be aware that if you are utilizing the existing review board for the journal, that you are only selecting 3-5 individuals from the review board. We do not want to exhaust the review board by assigning 10 or more to each submitted special issue article and also expecting those individuals to conduct reviews for the standard pool of articles.

For more information, see Step 4 of the Journal Editor’s Guide.

Active Phase: Select and Contact Associate Editor to Evaluate

Active Phase: Assess and Approve Associate Editor Evaluations

Once at least three members of the Editorial Review Board have completed their evaluations, you may need to send the paper to an Associate Editor for an additional evaluation. Manuscripts are sent to an Associate Editor when reviewers have different opinions as to the publishing possibilities of a manuscript. For instance, you may have two reviewers accept a manuscript while a third recommends rejection. Alternatively, you may have two reviewers recommend rejection while the third recommends acceptance. In either situation, an Associate Editor must be asked to make the final recommendation.

Similarly to the ERB review, guest editors are welcome to request the journal’s existing associate editors to provide their feedback on manuscript submissions. Many guest editors also use their own pool of associate editors. While associate editors from outside the journal will not be added to the journal’s review board (unlike outside ad-hoc reviewers), these associate editors can provide their special issue guest editors with valuable feedback on a submission. So that they may complete their evaluations, you should provide, through email, your associate editor with a blind copy of the manuscript as well as copies of the Editorial Review Board evaluations already completed.

Please be aware that if you are utilizing the existing review board for the journal, that you are only selecting 1 individual from the Associate Editor pool. We do not want to exhaust the review board by assigning more reviews to each submitted special issue article and also expecting those individuals to conduct reviews for the standard pool of articles.

For more information, see Step 5 of the Journal Editor’s Guide.

Active Phase: Editor-in-Chief Evaluation

Now that all of the reviews have been completed, you can take the reviewers’ feedback into account in making a decision for this manuscript. You may choose to accept or reject the submission at this time, but most editors request revisions from their contributors prior to formally accepting the contribution to their journal.

Please note that the majority of authors will like to have the opportunity to revise their manuscripts as per the reviewer comments to ensure that their best work is being published in the journal.

Active Phase: Editor-in-Chief Revision Requested

Rather than fully accepting a manuscript, you may choose to accept it conditionally based upon the author’s revisions. By electing to send the manuscript back to the author for revision, you will be providing the author with all approved reviews as well as your own comments regarding the changes you feel need to be implemented before the paper can be accepted. Provide the author with four to six weeks to revise the paper.

Active Phase: Editor-in-Chief Revision Review

Upon receipt of the revised paper, you have two options. The first is to review the author’s changes yourself to make a find accept/reject decision. This is a good option when you have asked the author to make a few very specific edits, but in some cases, further review from your editorial board is needed.

Active Phase: Editor-in-Chief Revision Associate Editor Review

If you need additional feedback on a revised manuscript prior to making your final decision, you may send the revised manuscript back to the same Associate Editor who evaluated it the first time. Based on the Associate Editor’s second round of feedback, you should now have enough information to make a confident decision on the status of the manuscript.

The final phase of the development process is where you will complete your special issue by selecting papers for publication and creating your preface and table of contents. The entire process will culminate with the submission of your completed special issue to the Editor-in-Chief for approval and publication.

• Step 7: Accepting Manuscripts
• Step 8: Issue Selection
• Step 9: Completing the Issue

Active Phase: Accepted

For information on this step, see Step 7 of the Journal Editor’s Guide.

Once authors receive the acceptance of their article, they now receive a reminder email from the submission system to ensure that their final revised versions of their articles are uploaded and ready for publication. The authors are given 1 week to look over their articles and let the Journal Development Team and the editor know that their articles are ready for publication.

Before you receive the authors’ materials, be sure to familiarize yourself with the Final Submission Requirements for Authors.

As authors let the Journal Department and the guest editors know that their final materials have been uploaded into the submission system, IGI Global encourages the guest editors to double check the uploaded materials to ensure that the article meets IGI Global's submission guidelines as well as ensures that the article has been formally copy edited. All manuscripts must be professionally copyedited and revised prior to final submission. Further edits to the text cannot be made later in the process.

If any of the authors have failed to send you an item or have failed to prepare an item correctly, please contact them as soon as possible to ensure the speedy delivery of the missing/incorrect item. This will also be your opportunity to make any necessary last-minute corrections or edits to the manuscripts before the Journal Department moves forward with the publication of the article

**Please note that any items that do not conform to IGI Global standards will be sent back to the authors for correction, so it is vitally important to ensure that the submission of each completed manuscript is entirely correct to facilitate the efficient and on-schedule completion of the publication process.**

As a guest editor to this journal, you will not be utilizing eEditorial Discovery®^TM to assign your selected manuscripts to an issue. Instead, you will be providing your final table of contents to the journal’s Editor-in-Chief, who will schedule your special issue for publication.

For more information on preparing your special issue for submission, see Step 8 of the Journal Editor’s Guide.

Once the Editor-in-Chief of the journal approves of the completed special issue materials, they will assign the articles to the current volume. IGI Global will have to be supplied with the guest editorial preface before we can move forward with it toward publication.

The minimum amount of articles that need to be accepted into a special issue for a hybrid journal is 5 articles. For Open Access journals, the minimum is increased to 8 articles to be accepted and published. There is no longer a maximum amount of articles that can be accepted to publish in special issues. We ask that the guest editors strive for the highest level of diversity in their special issue.

Active Phase: Download Final Materials

Active Phase: Published

Active Phase: Rejected

Writing Your Preface

As the guest editor of this special issue, you will be expected to write a guest editorial preface to the issue. Your preface will be your opportunity to introduce readers to the contents of the issue and explain a little about your criteria for selecting them and any particular focus or subject covered by the issue’s contents.

For more information on writing your preface, see Step 9 of the Journal Editor’s Guide.

Submitting Your Completed Special Issue

Once you have completed preparing your materials and verifying that all requirements have been met, check your authors’ manuscripts one last time to confirm submission of the final version and to ensure that these articles meet IGI Global formatting and publication requirements. If you are certain that the issue is ready for publication, please notify your development editor and the journal’s Editor-in-Chief that the contents are ready to be assigned to a forthcoming issue.

Your accepted articles will all be contained within the eEditorial Discovery®^TM online submission manager, but you will still need to submit your table of contents to the journal Editor-in-Chief and your assigned development editor at IGI Global via email. With the new interface of the submission system, there is now a place for the guest editors to upload their prefaces. If the preface for your special issue has been uploaded in the submission system, please let the Editor(s)-in-Chief of the journal and the development editor for IGI Global know.

Please note that until your special issue goes to publication, we may still contact you with any questions, concerns, or corrections needed to ensure the quality and timeliness of your final publication. Should you have any questions or concerns, or be in need of any assistance during the final steps of the development process, please do not hesitate to contact your development editor.

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On behalf of the development team, thank you for your diligent work and excellence in overseeing the development of this publication. We wish you the very best for a most successful special issue!