Guidelines for Special/Guest issue

A special issue is a collection of articles in a particular subject area/theme within the journal’s scope. The special issues are organized and edited by a Guest Editor, who has relevant experience in the specific subject area.

1. Proposal for a special/guest-edited issue

The proposal for the special issues can be submitted to the Editor-in-chief for an initial evaluation and approval and such proposals should be arranged as per the following specifications:

• Title of the Special/Guest Issue.
• A brief Scientific profile of the proposed Guest Editors including their present affiliations, email addresses, websites, research interests, and links to their scientific profiles like SCOPUS, RESEARCHERID, ORCIDs etc. The number of guest editors should be limited to three to four only unless there are sub-topics within the proposed theme or the number of submissions is more and there is a need to involve more experts.
• A statement regarding the necessity of this special issue and the relevance of the Special Issue as per the journal’s scope. The summary of the special issue should not be more than 250 words.
• Proposed date of starting of submissions and deadline.

1. Submission, peer-review, and editorial process

All articles submitted to the special issue will undergo the same rigorous peer review process as our regular articles. Every article will be subject to technical review (pre-check) and, a single-blind peer review using at least two external reviewers. The editorial process and other related procedures will be consistent with those applied to our regular articles. We would like to emphasize that we do not make any compromises when it comes to the scientific quality of the content and take peer review and publishing ethics guidelines very seriously. We encourage all authors who submit their work to special issues to be aware of our journal policies, author guidelines, including our peer review and editorial process to ensure the highest standards of academic rigor and integrity. We are committed to maintain the same level of excellence in our special issue as we do in our regular issues.

1. Guidelines for the Guest editors

Guest Editors are responsible for the tasks that require their subject-specific expertise, such as selecting appropriate reviewers for submitted papers and making the final recommendation regarding the acceptance or rejection of submitted papers based on the reviewer reports. Our editorial staff provides Guest editors with any administrative assistance they may need for example: contacting late reviewers, sending reminder emails to authors and reviewers, notifying authors, tracking down missing material, etc. The guest editors can also take the assistance of the journal’s associate editor or the section editor(s), wherever required. 

The guest editors are expected to be aware of the journal’s policies, including our peer review and editorial process before handling the submissions.

3.1. Submission: The authors can submit their articles through our online submission and peer-review system. While submitting their article the authors needed to select the special issue title. Once the authors finished the submission they will receive an automated confirmation email along with the manuscript number.

3.2. Editorial/Technical review: All the submitted articles shall be checked for style, novelty, methodological thoroughness, presentation of results, the correctness of the references, plagiarism, quality of images, etc. Please read the author's guidelines for more details about this step. The journal’s in-house editors will work in close cooperation with the guest editors to make an initial check.

3.3. Peer-Review

The manuscript that passes the initial check/desk review will be subjected to double-blinded peer review. The manuscript will be reviewed by a minimum of two suitable experts (whose identities will remain anonymous to the authors) in the respective subject area. Please refer to our peer review policies for details. The guest editors are responsible to provide a list of suitable external reviewers in a ratio of 1:3 which means at least three experts must be provided for every article. However, in case of the unavailability of reviewers, the guest editors can also choose the reviewers from the journal’s reviewer panel or consult section editor(s) to search for new reviewers. It is always advisable to search scientific databases such as Science Direct, Pub Med or Google scholar to invite suitable external reviewers.

3.4. Editorial Decision and Revision

The Guest Editor(s) can accept, reject, ask the author for revision, or ask for an additional reviewer after the peer review process. When making an editorial decision the guest editors must be consistent with the journal’s peer-review and editorial policies.

3.5. Transparency and confidentiality

The guest editors are required to use our online submission and peer-review system for all the communications related to the journal and the special issue so that it can be accessed in system logs. The guest editors should protect the confidentiality of all material submitted to the journal and all communications with reviewers.

3.6. Manipulation of Citations and metrics

The guest editors must refrain from suggesting reference citations to the authors, and should also remove any similar comments made by reviewers. Furthermore, the guest editor should not attempt to influence the journal's citation or ranking by suggesting citations or artificially increasing any journal metric by any other means.

3.7. Submissions by the Guest editor(s)

Guest editor(s) can submit a maximum of two articles to their special issue. Such submissions will be handled by the journal’s editors and guest editors will not have any involvement in the peer-review and editorial process of these articles.

3.8. Conflicts of interest

The guest editors are expected to read the journal’s conflicts of interest policies before starting the editorial process and handling the submissions. The guest editor(s) must be very cautious regarding the conflicts of interest at various editorial steps such as handling the articles and also during the selection of peer-reviewers.

1. Promoting your Special Issue

We discourage the bulk email (multiple emails sent to a group of researchers) promotion. However, the special issues can be promoted through social media or personalized emails to the researchers in your contact. The journal will also promote the special issues through its social media pages and also place an accouchement on the journal’s website. The guest editors can also promote special issues in academic events such as conferences and seminars.