Special Issues

A Special Issue is a collection of articles that concentrates on a topical research area within the scope of a journal.

These Issues provide a venue for research on emerging areas, highlight important subdisciplines, or describe new cross-disciplinary applications.

The following sections explain the benefits and responsibilities of running a Special Issue as a Guest Editor, and the benefits of submitting your manuscript to a Special Issue as an author.

  • Proposing a Special Issue
  • Curating a Special Issue
  • Submitting to a Special Issue

Benefits of being a Guest Editor

The Guest Editor team as a whole receives three APC waivers, and is allowed to submit a maximum of three research and/or review manuscripts to their own Special Issue. The team can also use the APC waivers to commission research or review articles from experts in the field.

Once all manuscripts have passed peer review, we ask the Guest Editor team to write an Editorial that introduces the Special Issue; this article type is exempt from an APC.

To ensure an impartial review process, submissions to the Special Issue by the Guest Editors will be handled by members of the journal’s Editorial Board. Please see this section for more information.

In recognition of the Guest Editors’ efforts, and to provide full transparency about the journal’s review process, the name of the Guest Editor who accepts a manuscript will be included in the published version of the article.

Additional benefits of being a Guest Editor include:

  • Improving your academic profile and marking you out as influential within your discipline
  • Increasing the visibility and impact of work published in the Special Issue thanks to Hindawi’s immediate, worldwide, and barrier-free Open Access
  • Being at the forefront of scientific communication
  • Exerting creativity in the inception and development of a topic
  • Assembling and working with a strong team of Editors
  • Networking with like-minded colleagues around the world and forging new contacts with field leaders
  • Handling manuscripts close to your professional interests and gaining a better understanding of editorial processes
  • Seeing articles from your Special Issue referenced and cited in future articles
  • Feeling you have contributed to the development of the journal