Special Issues

What a proposal should contain

1. The question the collection addresses, and why it needs a collection rather than a single paper or an ordinary run of submissions.
2. How it sits within the journal’s remit — the connection to family medicine care, research, education or the discipline itself.
3. The proposed guest editors: name, affiliation, and the work that establishes their standing on the question, with an ORCID iD where they have one.
4. The forms of work you expect to gather, and roughly how many articles.
5. A realistic timetable, from the call to the close of submissions.
6. Any competing interest a proposed guest editor holds in the subject.

Send proposals to the editorial office at [email protected]. The editors respond with a decision or with questions; a proposal is not a commitment by either side until the journal confirms it.

How a special issue is run

A special issue is a themed route into the journal, not a separate journal with its own standards. Everything below applies to it exactly as it applies to an ordinary submission.

• Guest editors work under the oversight of the Editor-in-Chief, who remains accountable for what the journal publishes.
• All submissions undergo initial editorial screening. Manuscripts that meet the journal’s scope and minimum requirements proceed to independent peer review: single-blind by default; double-blind review is available on request.
• Editorial decisions are based on scope, scientific quality, methodological rigor, ethical compliance, reporting quality, and relevance to the journal.
• A guest editor’s own manuscript is handled independently of that guest editor, by an editor from the board, and the guest editor takes no part in the decision.
• A competing interest in any submission is declared and the guest editor recuses themselves from it.
• Being part of a special issue does not change how a manuscript is reviewed, how long it takes, or whether it is accepted.

The policies that govern it