Special issues

Special issue information

Guidance for special issues

The Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning (JEPP) welcomes proposals for special issues.

JEPP special issues serve to present a body of research centred around current conceptual debates or specific challenging issues in environmental policy and planning. They are expected to produce milestones of internationally leading scholarship in the field.

All manuscripts submitted under a special issue should match the criteria for publication in the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning, i.e. they should be publishable on their own merit.

The total number of words for a special issue is 64,000 (including references, tables, figures, appendices etc). As a rule of thumb, each page of tables, figures or diagrams would ‘cost’ 475 words which must be deducted from the word limit. It is up to the guest editors to decide how to allocate the 64,000 words between the contributors. However, all manuscript should comply with JEPP’s general limit of 8,000 words. The special issue proposal should include a plan for managing the word limit.

How to propose a special issue

JEPP will review special issue proposals twice a year. The deadlines each year for submission of proposals are 30th April and 31st October.

To propose a special issue, please submit an outline that includes the following information:
• Names, institutional affiliations and contact details of the guest editors
• Rationale of the special issue, including expected audiences and contribution to current debates in academic and policy and planning
• Abstracts of the proposed papers (no more than 10 paper proposals)
• Short biographical profiles of contributors
• An indicative timeline that includes deadlines for the submission of papers vetted by the guest editors, submission of revised papers, and the likely date for submission of the full package of all accepted papers
• Any suggestions that you might have for special promotion activities to increase visibility, downloads and citations, in particular availability of funds for open access publication of individual papers or the entire special issue

Proposals should be sent as a word or pdf document via email to [email protected].

The JEPP editors will review all proposals received before the deadline to reach a decision, and notify the proposal author(s) of the decision within a month of the deadline. If we decide to accept and proceed with a proposal, one of the JEPP editors will be nominated to manage the review process in close cooperation with the guest editors.

Typical timeline for special issue production

We expect that the full package of accepted papers (to enable cross-referencing) can be submitted to Taylor and Francis around 15 months after the special issue proposal has been accepted. This refers to the acceptance of all proposed papers and not the time to print, which is subject to broader publishing schedules and other circumstances in the JEPP pipeline.

Typically, manuscripts vetted by the guest editors will be submitted between six and nine months after the special issue proposal has been accepted. The first round of reviews should take no longer than three months. After that authors have approximately six weeks to address the reviewer queries. We expect that the full package of accepted papers (to enable cross-referencing) can be submitted to the Publisher within 15 months after the special issue proposal has been accepted. The guest editors are responsible for ensuring that all authors comply with the time schedule.

Process for review and publication of a special issue

Guest editors must ensure that all manuscripts are suitable for publication in JEPP and concur with the scope the special issue before they are submitted to the journal. Manuscripts that have been vetted by the guest editors are submitted to the journal via the online manuscript submission system ScholarOne, where a specific section will be set up by the publishers which allows authors to link their manuscript to the relevant special issue.

All submitted manuscripts will go through the normal double blind peer review process just as any other paper submitted to the journal. The review process is managed by the JEPP editor identified as the contact.

Guest editors will be responsible for recommending reviewers - a minimum of 6 potential reviewers should be listed for each paper. Reviewers cannot be part of the special issue, be affiliated to the same institution as the author, or have published jointly with the author. When selecting reviewers, guest editors shall ensure that reviewers have no conflict of interest and possess the relevant competences to review the specific paper.

Following the external reviews, the JEPP editors make the decision on whether or not a paper is suitable for publication. Recommendations must be based on a minimum of two, preferably three, reviews. The assigned JEPP editor will consult the guest editors in the case of difficult or borderline decisions.

After an editorial decision has been made on all submitted manuscripts, the collection of papers will be published as a special issue in print and online.

Papers not meeting the 15 month, or extended, deadline will be processed as individual papers. Similarly, if the number of papers accepted for publication is insufficient to form a special issue, the successful papers will be published in a special section or as lone-standing research manuscripts.

Please click here for a downloadable version of the above guidance.