Special issues
Propose a Special Issue
Journal of Evolutionary Science welcomes proposals for focused collections that address important questions in evolutionary science. Researchers with relevant expertise are invited to review the proposal requirements and contact the editorial office.
- Who may proposeResearchers with expertise in the subject
- ReviewIndependent, as for any submission
- Where to send itThe editorial office
What a Special Issue is for here
A collection earns its place when the articles in it answer each other. If the same papers would read no differently scattered across ordinary issues, the collection is not doing anything a keyword search could not.
The strongest proposals take a question the field is actively arguing about and assemble work that bears on it from more than one direction — a phylogenetic analysis beside an experimental result beside a methodological contribution — so that a reader can see where the evidence agrees and where it does not.
A Special Issue sits inside the journal's ordinary remit. It does not widen the scope, and nothing is admitted to a collection that would not be admitted on its own. The aims and scope applies unchanged.
The test a proposal has to pass
Would these articles be worth more together than apart, and is the question they address one the field has not settled?
What a proposal should contain
- The question
- The scientific question the collection addresses, and why it is worth assembling work around now.
- The scope of the collection
- What kinds of contribution it would take — empirical, methodological, synthesis, theoretical — and roughly how many.
- The guest editors
- Names, affiliations, ORCID iDs where held, and the expertise each brings. Include anything that could be read as a competing interest.
- How it would be filled
- Whether the collection would be assembled by open call, by invitation, or both, and how you would avoid it becoming a single group's work.
Send a proposal to [email protected]. The editorial office will tell you what it needs next.
How a collection is run
A Special Issue is edited to the same standard as the rest of the journal, and the safeguards exist so that a collection with a point of view still publishes assessable work.
- Independent review — every manuscript in a collection goes through the journal's ordinary process. All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal's scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review. Manuscripts that proceed to external peer review are normally evaluated by at least two independent subject-matter experts. Single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
- Guest-editor responsibility — guest editors propose the scope, invite contributions and handle review within the collection, under the journal's policies.
- Conflicts and recusal — a guest editor submitting to their own collection has that manuscript handled independently of them, by a journal editor.
- Journal oversight — the editorial board retains final responsibility for what is published in a collection, and a decision can be referred to it at any point.
- Decisions — Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal. Inclusion in a collection is not itself a reason to publish.
- Charges
- The ordinary article processing charge applies; the amounts are on the charges page
- License terms
- CC BY 4.0, as for every article
- Policies
- Editorial policies, unchanged
- Preparation
- Instructions for authors, unchanged
Submitting in the meantime
Regular submissions are accepted throughout the year, and a manuscript does not need a collection to belong here.