International Politics has a strong track-record of publishing guest edited special issues on a specific topic. The editors welcome special issue inquires, as well as submissions of entire special issues for considerations.
How the Process Works
Special Issues often come out of a workshop on a specific topic. The guest editors are responsible for establishing the intellectual architecture of the workshop and special issues. Guest editors ensure that following the workshop all papers are submitted at the same time to the IP Editorial Team by their individual authors via the online submission system.
Guest Editors should edit the submissions BEFORE they are submitted to the IP Team for consideration and peer review. Guest editors should ensure continuity and relationships between the papers BEFORE they are submitted to IP. Once articles are submitted to IP the review process and production is headed up by the editorial team, not the guest editors. Final decision to publish paper and the special issues resides with the IP Editors.
Because the IP Editorial System is online, it is a closed system and guest editors cannot be plugged into the process. Thus all guest editing should be done prior to submission of pieces.
Once pieces are submitted to IP, the Editorial Team will have all pieces peer-reviewed, they will offer internal house editing recommendations, revised pieces will be reviewed in-house and all pieces will be copy-edited before publication.
If a majority of special issue pieces fail to pass peer review, the Editorial Team reserves the right to offer publication to select individual pieces in proposed the special issue.
