1. Purpose, scholarly rationale and limits of a special issue
An effective special issue brings together a coherent set of contributions that addresses a timely scholarly question or an established gap in the literature. It is not simply a collection of manuscripts united by the professional network of a guest editor. Its proposed scope should be sufficiently precise to guide submissions and sufficiently broad to permit legitimate intellectual disagreement.
The journal’s ordinary standards continue to apply. A special issue must not create an easier route to acceptance, guarantee publication for invited contributors or bypass independent editorial judgment. Its value should be judged by scholarly coherence and the quality of its individual papers.
Before launching a call, define the intended readership, the relationship to the journal’s aims and the added value of publishing the papers together. Document why a special issue is appropriate rather than relying on ordinary submission channels.
2. Proposal development and formal approval
A proposal should state the working title, scholarly rationale, thematic boundaries, proposed article types, target schedule and potential guest editors. It should also explain how the proposed topic fits the journal’s remit and identify foreseeable risks, such as a narrow contributor network or unusually strong commercial interest.
The editor-in-chief or authorized journal leadership should review proposals before public announcements or invitations. Approval should cover the theme, editorial roles, review model, timeline, planned communications and any journal-specific requirements; informal encouragement is not equivalent to formal authorization.
Record the decision and any conditions of approval. A proposal may need a narrower scope, different editorial expertise, stronger conflict-management arrangements or a revised schedule before it can proceed.
3. Guest-editor eligibility, verification and appointment
Guest editors should have demonstrable subject expertise, relevant scholarly experience, an appropriate professional record and enough time to manage the proposed workload. Assess their ability to oversee rigorous peer review, handle disagreement and work within the journal’s policies rather than relying only on institutional title or publication volume.
Verify identity, institutional affiliation and contact details through independent scholarly or institutional sources. Review relationships among proposed guest editors and their potential contributor community, and seek a sufficiently broad team when the topic spans disciplines or methods.
Appointment should be documented and time-limited, with explicit duties, supervision, conflict disclosures and circumstances for reassignment or termination. Do not publicly advertise a guest editor’s participation before obtaining informed consent.
4. Editorial authority and accountability
The journal retains ultimate responsibility for everything published in a special issue. Guest editors may coordinate the thematic scope, solicit suitable submissions and oversee assigned manuscripts only within delegated authority. They should not control acceptance outcomes without the oversight required by journal governance.
Define who makes initial assessments, invites reviewers, evaluates reports, communicates decisions and authorizes final acceptance. Where the guest editor is conflicted, the manuscript must move to an independent editor who can make a substantive decision.
The editor-in-chief or designated supervising editor should have visibility into the workflow and intervene when review quality, deadlines, ethical concerns or conflicts threaten the integrity of the issue. Oversight must be meaningful rather than ceremonial.
5. Competing interests and editorial independence
Before appointment, guest editors should disclose relevant financial, institutional, professional and personal interests. The journal should revisit disclosures when circumstances change or when specific manuscripts reveal relationships that were not apparent at the proposal stage.
Submissions from guest editors, their close collaborators, current institutional colleagues or people with other material relationships require independent handling under the journal’s policy. An editor should not select reviewers, inspect confidential reports or decide a paper when a material conflict makes impartial handling inappropriate.
Commercial sponsorship, conference partnerships or institutional support must not determine reviewer choice or acceptance. Any funding arrangement should be transparent, and the journal should preserve independent editorial control over both the special issue and individual manuscripts.
6. Build an inclusive and accurate call for papers
A call for papers should describe the topic, suitable research questions, accepted article types, submission instructions, relevant dates and the fact that all papers undergo the journal’s established editorial and peer-review procedures. Avoid language that implies that invitation, abstract acceptance or participation in an event guarantees publication.
Recruitment should reach relevant communities beyond the guest editors’ immediate collaborators. An intellectually diverse call reduces the risk of an issue becoming a closed network and can improve methodological breadth, geographic participation and competing scholarly perspectives.
Use approved journal channels for publicity. Guest editors should not make independent promises about acceptance, publication dates, charges, waivers or indexing that the journal has not authorized.
7. Invited papers, conference collections and prior dissemination
Invited manuscripts are subject to the same originality, ethical, reporting and peer-review requirements as unsolicited submissions. Invitations express editorial interest, not acceptance. Record the basis for invitations where relevant to transparency and conflict management.
Conference papers, proceedings contributions and preprints require attention to the journal’s policies on prior dissemination and overlap. Authors should disclose related versions and explain the new contribution where required. A special issue should not republish essentially identical work merely to create a thematic collection.
If an issue is connected to a society, meeting or research network, distinguish organizational involvement from editorial authority. Conference organizers and sponsors should not obtain privileged access to confidential peer-review information.
8. Submission intake and initial assessment
Every submission should enter the journal’s approved manuscript system, with the same author declarations and baseline checks required for regular articles. Screen for scope, completeness, reporting standards, ethics statements, relevant overlap and obvious conflicts before initiating external review.
An in-scope topic does not guarantee that a paper is scientifically suitable. Conversely, a strong manuscript that falls outside the special issue’s precise theme may be considered for the journal’s regular track where policy permits and authors agree.
Record who performed the initial assessment and why a manuscript proceeded, was declined or was reassigned. Do not allow guest editors to screen their own submissions or those of closely connected contributors.
9. Independent reviewer selection and peer-review quality
Reviewer selection should be driven by manuscript-specific expertise, independence and availability. Guest editors should not rely exclusively on personal contacts, repeat the same small reviewer panel across an issue or accept unverified author-recommended reviewers without independent checks.
Apply the journal’s ordinary review model, confidentiality rules and quality standards. Assess the substance of reports rather than counting recommendations, and obtain targeted additional expertise when a material methodological or disciplinary question remains unresolved.
Supervising editors should monitor unusual patterns, such as very short review times, reciprocal reviewing among contributors, repeated use of the same reviewers or acceptance without substantive critique. A pattern warrants examination, not an automatic allegation of manipulation.
10. Special handling of guest-editor and board-member submissions
A guest editor’s own manuscript must be assigned to an editor who is independent of the authors and able to oversee reviewer selection, correspondence and the final decision. The guest editor should not have privileged access to the confidential record for that submission.
The same principle applies to manuscripts from close collaborators or other relationships that create a material competing interest. When all proposed guest editors are conflicted, the journal must appoint an appropriately independent handling editor.
Any applicable disclosure about guest-editor contributions should be accurate and consistent with journal policy. A manuscript must not be rejected solely because a guest editor authored it, nor accepted under a weaker standard.
11. Manage revisions, decisions and acceptance authority
Decision letters should synthesize the important scientific issues and distinguish essential changes from optional suggestions. Authors should not receive incompatible reviewer demands without editorial clarification or be subjected to new requirements merely to prolong the review cycle.
A guest editor’s recommendation may inform the outcome, but the person authorized by journal policy must confirm acceptance. Supervising editors should be able to review the underlying evidence, particularly where the review history is atypical or a conflict is present.
Do not impose an acceptance quota to fill the planned issue. Papers that do not meet the journal’s standards should be declined or, where appropriate, considered under a separate workflow without distorting the special issue’s scientific threshold.
12. Timelines, workflow monitoring and delays
Plan sufficient time for proposal approval, publicity, submission, screening, review, revision, final checks and production. A credible timeline recognizes that independent reviewers and substantial revisions cannot be scheduled with complete certainty.
Track submission volumes, review invitations, overdue reports, pending decisions and manuscripts requiring independent handling. Escalate bottlenecks early rather than allowing a fixed publication date to pressure editors into abbreviated assessment.
When an issue is delayed or receives fewer publishable papers than expected, communicate transparently with affected authors. The journal may extend, narrow, postpone or discontinue the collection under documented governance rather than relax publication standards.
13. Publication charges, waivers and financial transparency
Communicate any applicable article processing charges and waiver arrangements using the journal’s approved public information. Guest editors should not privately negotiate publication promises, link acceptance to payment or imply that a special-issue invitation carries an unapproved financial benefit.
Any sponsorship or financial support should be disclosed where relevant, with a clear separation between funding and editorial decisions. The existence of funding does not justify preferential treatment of sponsored contributors.
Where fee disputes arise, route them through authorized administrative and complaint procedures. Scientific assessment should remain independent of an author’s ability to pay and of any commercial targets associated with the issue.
14. Ethics, integrity and suspected manipulation
Special issues face the same risks as regular publishing, including plagiarism, duplicate publication, image or data concerns, authorship disputes, undisclosed interests and compromised peer review. Concentrated contributor networks can create additional relationship and reciprocity risks that require careful oversight.
When a credible concern arises, preserve the relevant record, limit confidential access and follow the journal’s established research-integrity process. Guest editors should not independently investigate institutions or contact unrelated third parties on behalf of the journal.
Where evidence suggests a systematic problem across multiple manuscripts, assess the scope with publisher leadership and appropriate expertise. Avoid treating all contributors as implicated merely because their papers belong to the same collection.
15. Thematic coherence without editorial gatekeeping
Maintain a coherent theme through accurate calls, initial scope assessment and editorial introductions, not through pressure to reach predetermined scientific conclusions. A valuable special issue can contain contradictory results, critical perspectives and diverse methods.
Editorial framing should not be used to exclude methodologically sound work solely because it challenges the guest editors’ preferred interpretation. Where the theme evolves during submission and review, changes should be approved and communicated rather than quietly redefining the collection.
Consider whether a paper adds distinct evidence or analysis rather than repeating existing contributions. Coherence is a scholarly organizing principle, not a reason to manufacture consensus.
16. Production, collection presentation and metadata
Each accepted paper should receive the journal’s normal production, copyediting, proofing, licensing and metadata checks. Special-issue presentation must not compromise accurate article-level records or imply that unaccepted submissions are forthcoming publications.
Confirm the collection title, guest-editor names and affiliations, article ordering or grouping, introductory material and any relevant sponsorship disclosures. Editorial introductions should clearly distinguish commentary from peer-reviewed research and follow the journal’s applicable article-type policy.
If articles are published on a rolling basis, explain how the collection page will be updated. Maintain stable links and metadata so readers can identify individual articles and the collection without confusion.
17. Incomplete, cancelled or transferred special issues
A special issue may be delayed, reduced in scope or cancelled because of insufficient suitable submissions, editorial capacity, unresolved conflicts or integrity concerns. Such decisions should be made by authorized journal leadership and documented with a clear rationale.
Authors of manuscripts already under consideration should receive timely information about the available options, including continued consideration in the journal’s regular track where permitted. Transfer should not occur without appropriate consent or obscure the original review history.
Do not accept marginal manuscripts simply to complete a collection. An incomplete special issue is preferable to a completed collection whose review standards or editorial independence were compromised.
18. Post-publication responsibility and correction pathways
Responsibility for the scholarly record continues after a special issue closes. Concerns about an individual article should follow the journal’s established post-publication procedures for assessment, correction, expression of concern or retraction as warranted by the evidence.
If a concern implicates the collection’s editorial process, assess whether other manuscripts or reviewer assignments may have been affected. A systematic review should be proportionate and should not assume that every article in the issue is unreliable.
Collection pages and editorial introductions may need updates when article status changes. Preserve transparent article-level notices and links rather than silently removing material from the record.
19. Evaluate outcomes and retain an auditable record
After publication or cancellation, assess whether the issue met its stated scholarly purpose and whether editorial procedures were followed. Useful evidence includes thematic coherence, the quality and independence of review, author communication, conflict handling and the completeness of the publication record.
Retain proposal approvals, appointment terms, disclosures, workflow decisions, review histories and exceptional-case records in approved systems. Document deviations from the original plan and the reasons they were authorized.
Use the findings to improve future proposal criteria, guest-editor training, reviewer verification and supervision. Avoid judging success solely by submission count, citation projections or revenue.
20. A repeatable special-issue governance framework
Approve a focused scholarly proposal before public recruitment. Verify and appoint qualified guest editors under documented terms, assign independent oversight, disclose relevant interests and communicate the call accurately.
Process every manuscript through the journal’s normal checks and independent peer review. Reassign conflicted submissions, monitor review quality and protect the authority of the designated decision-maker. Adjust timelines rather than lowering standards.
Publish only work that satisfies the journal’s requirements, maintain accurate collection metadata and preserve post-publication responsibility. The central test is whether the special issue would withstand the same scrutiny expected of the journal’s regular research output.