Guidelines for Special Issues

Below, please find a brief outline of the publication process, the tasks expected of the special issue editors, and links to relevant websites. Please follow the instructions below carefully and contact us with any questions.

 

Proposal

Please email your proposal for a special issue to the journal editors for evaluation. Your proposal should include:

  • A tentative title for the special issue
  • An outline of not more than one page summarizing the focus
  • Titles and abstracts of up to five articles, including the special issue introduction.

 

Email addresses

Alexandra Schwell: alexandra.schwell@aau.at

Laura Stark: laura.stark@jyu.fi

 

After acceptance

If your special issue proposal is accepted, please note that it is the special issue editors’ responsibility to find and select authors and to communicate with them regarding deadlines, timelines, revisions, and return of proofs.

Before submitting the special issue to EE and starting the peer review process, special issue editors should take at least one round of detailed editing of all contributions to make sure that they contribute to, complement, deepen, add to, or in other ways develop the special issue theme in important ways. Only those papers that seem most likely to meet the editorial criteria of the journal should be submitted.

Special issue editors are responsible for their special issue's quality and timely editing. Authors must be aware that the EE criteria of quality, originality, and significance, as stated in the Author Guidelines, apply to articles in special issues as well.

Special issue editors are expected to check and ensure that the format of the articles adheres to EE guidelines and that all in-text references and reference lists at the ends of articles are complete.

Please take the length of articles into consideration; the maximum limit for EE contributions is 8,000 words. Please make sure that all authors follow the author guidelines.

The Ethnologia Europaea journal editors will make the final decision of acceptance of the articles. It is essential to inform all contributors that the peer review process might result in evaluations that eventually lead to a rejection of their contribution. Being part of a special issue submission does not guarantee publication.


Preparation of manuscripts before double-blind peer review

All authors in the special issue must follow the Author Guidelines in preparing their article manuscripts.

Please ensure that authors have anonymised their manuscripts before submission. Manuscripts that have not been anonymised will not be accepted for peer review.


Submission

All submissions need to be made through the submission portal of our journal platform. Please see the link ‘Instructions for submission’ in Author Guidelines.

Please make sure to submit

  • an abstract
  • keywords
  • one anonymised version
  • one version with author, affiliation, email
  • a short bio.

 

Peer review process

All submissions will be double-blind peer-reviewed by active researchers. Special issue editors need to provide a list of at least three potential reviewers for each article. Journal editors reserve the right to reject manuscripts that do not meet EE’s criteria without sending them for formal review.

The journal editors will send the manuscripts to peer-reviewers through the journal platform. The revision process will occur through the journal’s publication platform and by email.

After receiving the reviews, the journal editors will add their editorial comments and send them to the authors, cc’ing the special issue editors.

The special issue editors must handle the revision process in close cooperation with the authors (advising, reading the results, and advising again, etc.). They should also remind the authors to cc them in any communication with the journal editors.

When submitting their revision, authors have to provide a cover letter to the journal editors in which they address how they have revised their articles point by point according to the reviewers’ comments.

 

Preparation of the manuscript for copy-editing and proofreading:

Special issue editors need to check the formatting and references of all articles in their special issue. They will ensure that all references cited in the text are listed in the bibliography and vice versa. They will also ensure the references are complete and follow Ethnologia Europaea guidelines. Based on this revision and checking process, journal editors make the final decision on whether or not to accept the final manuscripts for publication.

 

Proofreading and language check

Please note that all authors are expected to have their accepted, final text proofread by a native speaker at their own expense – this should be after the text has gone through the peer review process and has been accepted for publication. This proofreading should be completed, and the article should be resubmitted to the journal editors by the issue deadline set by the journal editors.