About Special Issues
Special issues are designed to gather and move forward the leading edge of feminist economic research. In an important sense, special issues are about processes: creating space and scope for collaboration across diverse groups of scholars to create new knowledge, presenting opportunities to include traditionally under-represented scholars, and mentoring those new to feminist economics. Special issues are thus about much more than publishing a group of papers on the same broad topic together.
All submissions to the special issue must go through the journal’s regular peer review process, albeit one that is coordinated by the special issue’s guest editors. We require that at least one of the special issue’s guest editors be a current or former Feminist Economics associate editor. Thus, there is at least one person (most of our special issue guest editor teams have more than that) on the guest editorial team who is familiar with our editorial and review processes and standards. You can find a current list of our associate editor team on the journal’s website. We also expect guest editors to write a substantive introduction to the special issue.
Special issues typically start with an open call for abstracts of proposed papers, followed by at least one author workshop to present drafts and garner feedback. In addition to greatly improving the quality of the papers, such a workshop offers additional opportunities for mentorship and participation, even among scholars whose abstracts may not have been accepted.
To apply for a special issue, you can submit a short proposal to the journal’s Editor, who will in turn bring it to the Associate Editor team for consideration. The proposal should include the following elements.
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- Title of Proposed Issue
- Description – one or two paragraphs
- Sample Paper Topics
- Proposed Guest Editors, with at least one being a current Feminist Economics associate editor.
- Possible Funders to Approach. With rare exceptions, we must restrict ourselves to publishing special issues for which the costs, including editing, are fully covered — generally by a nonprofit foundation or governmental agency. Special issues are wonderful partly because they enable us to include traditionally under-represented scholars and perspectives, but we also find that the demands on our style editing are much greater. Special issues are also much better when they involve at least one author workshop to present drafts and garner feedback.
About Symposia
Rather than a special issue, an alternative is to submit the papers to the journal individually. Depending on how many papers are accepted, we can consider grouping them as a short series or symposium. Note that it can be difficult for us to “group” papers in an issue, as individual papers tend to move through peer-review and revisions processes at different rates. Please reach out to the Editor if you are interested in this option.