Guidelines to publish a Special Issue



Why a Special Issue?

Annals of Forest Research (Ann. For. Res.) publishes special issues including high quality papers of timely topics, either of (1) a conference or (2) on a hot subject. In case of a proposal not related to a conference, the papers could come from scientists and researchers invited by the Guest Editor(s) (GE) or could be subject to a public “Call for papers”, and in this case the submission will be available to everyone. The quality, significance and requirements of the papers and the peer review process are the same as for regular submissions.

A special issue is coordinated by experts renowned in their field, proved by their competencies, who will act as GE.

Submission of proposal

To publish a Special Issue, its initiator(s) will submit to Editor-in-Chief / Executive Editor a proposal including:

- A short presentation on the importance of special issue topics.

- A list of the editor(s), with a short introduction of each (name, affiliation, a brief CV, previous experience as GE). GEs of a special issue should belong to different institutions.

- When know, a list of proposed papers, including: title, authors and affiliations, and abstract. This can be submitted after receiving acceptance for editing the special issue.

- An estimate of the time schedule (start/end of submissions, tentative date of publishing), specified in weeks from a starting date (e.g. acceptance of the publishing). 

You are encouraged to include a reasonable number of review articles (i.e. 1 review article to 10 research papers) in your proposal. The final decision regarding the acceptance of publishing of the Special Issue belongs to Editor-in-Chief. 

Publishing process

(i) The initiators of the Special Issue will recommend the Guest Editor(s) of this special volume to Editor-in-Chief. The final decision on their acceptance belongs to Editor-in-Chief.

(ii) The requirements regarding ethics, article structure and formatting, and the peer-review process are the same as for regular submissions of Ann. For. Res., described in Guidelines for Authors.

(iii) The review of each manuscript (at least 2 reviewers) will be organized by the GE, and at least one of the reviewers will be named or approved by Editor-in-Chief / Executive Editor.

(iv) The Guest Editor(s) will submit the accepted/rejected manuscripts to Editor-in-Chief / Executive Editor, including their full information (e.g. comments, information about reviewers).

(v) Some duties of GE:

- will work with the editorial office to advertise for the special issue and attract quality manuscripts

- if necessary, will work with the author(s) in order to assure high quality articles

- will pay attention to a rigorous peer-review process

- will contribute to the final proof-reading of the entire volume

- will collaborate with the Executive Editor & Editor-in-Chief to assess the progress and publishing of the issue in the proposed time.

- they cannot be authors or coauthors on more than 2 articles.

(vi) The number of accepted manuscripts will be decided by peer-review, following the quality standards of Ann. For. Res. Once accepted, each article will be published in the section „Online First”, under the label of „Special Issue”.

(vii) The issue’s GE will write an editorial of a moderate length (no more than 3 pages), emphasizing the main topics and their importance. This applies if at least 4 papers of a Special Issue proposal were accepted for publishing.       

(viii) The final publishing decision belongs to Editor-in-Chief, who will finalize any disagreements risen during the editorial process.