Guest-Editing a Special Issue: A Guide

Search results for “guest editor” and “special issue” on this site currently surface content about a different problem: vetting whether a guest editor or a special-issue call is a paper-mill risk. That is real and important, but it is not this page. This guide is written for the researcher who has already been asked to guest-edit a journal special issue and wants to do the job well — how to scope the proposal, write a call for papers (CFP) that actually attracts the right submissions, and run the editorial workflow from proposal to final compilation. If you landed here looking for the integrity/oversight angle instead, see Guest Editor Vetting for what publishers check before granting someone editorial authority, or the reporting on how guest-edited special issues have been exploited by paper mills. Good craft and good vetting reinforce each other — a well-run special issue with a clear scope, a real editorial timeline, and disciplined conflict-of-interest handling is also a harder target for exactly the abuse those pages describe — but they are answering different questions.

What guest-editing actually involves

A guest editor (sometimes “lead guest editor” when a small team shares the role) is an outside researcher, usually not a permanent member of a journal’s editorial board, recruited to run one themed collection of articles within an ongoing journal. The role carries real editorial authority for that collection: proposing and scoping the topic, writing the call for papers, recruiting peer reviewers, making accept/reject/revise recommendations, and compiling the final set of articles — all under the oversight of the journal’s standing editor-in-chief, who remains accountable for the collection’s content. It is a fixed-term, single-collection assignment rather than an ongoing editorial-board appointment, which is exactly why the role needs its own onboarding and its own safeguards, distinct from those applied to standing editors. Editorial independence and editorial contribution as concepts apply to a guest editor the same way they apply to any editor: decisions on individual manuscripts have to be made on scholarly merit, insulated from the editor’s own publishing or citation interests.

Before you say yes: scoping and proposing the special issue

Almost every reputable journal requires a formal special-issue proposal before any call for papers goes out, evaluated by the editor-in-chief (often with editorial-board input) on criteria such as topical fit, timeliness, feasibility, and the strength of the proposed guest-editor team. Elsevier’s own guidance to guest editors, for example, describes a proposal stage covering a feasible timeline, the full guest-editor team, and an estimated submission volume, reviewed by the co-editors-in-chief before a call for papers is authorized. Wiley’s guest-editor resources describe a comparable pattern — the editorial and publishing teams collaborate with the prospective guest-editor team on proposal evaluation before the collection is opened. Before you submit a proposal, be realistic about three things the journal will be assessing and that will determine whether the issue succeeds once it is underway:

Scope discipline. A special issue succeeds on a genuinely coherent, well-bounded theme — broad enough to attract enough submissions, narrow enough that the collection reads as a real contribution rather than a loosely related grab-bag.
A realistic timeline. Per Elsevier’s published guest-editor guidance, the full process from proposal acceptance to final manuscript acceptance typically runs on the order of nine months, and first-round decisions are generally expected back to authors within about four to six weeks of submission. Treat these as a planning baseline to adapt to your field and journal, not a fixed rule — your specific journal’s guidelines govern.
A real co-editor team, not just a figurehead list. Reviewers assess proposals partly on whether the named guest editors have the subject-matter breadth and available time to actually run peer review across the issue’s scope, not just the standing to attract submissions.

Writing an effective call for papers

Once the proposal is approved, the (lead) guest editor is typically responsible for drafting the call for papers (CFP) itself. This is a different task from assessing a CFP you’ve received, which is covered separately in Call for Papers (CFP): What It Is and How to Vet It — that guide is written for the researcher deciding whether to trust and submit to a CFP; this section is written for the editor producing one that a careful researcher will trust. A CFP that does its job clearly states:

The scope statement — the theme in one or two precise paragraphs, plus a bulleted list of subtopics or tracks so a researcher can self-screen quickly whether their work fits.
Submission format and length limits — full research article, review, short communication, or a mix, and any word or page limits that differ from the journal’s standard submission guidelines.
The review model — typically the journal’s standard peer-review process applied to a compressed timeline, stated explicitly so authors know what to expect (single-blind, double-blind, open, etc., matching the parent journal’s normal model).
Key dates — submission deadline (or a rolling window, if the journal publishes special-issue articles online as they’re accepted rather than holding the whole collection for simultaneous release), expected notification timeframe, and any camera-ready or final-revision deadline.
How and where to submit — the exact manuscript-tracking-system pathway (a specific special-issue or article-collection option within the journal’s existing submission system, not a separate email address), since routing this correctly is what lets the guest editor actually see and triage incoming manuscripts.
Guest editor contact and short bios — naming the guest-editor team transparently is itself part of the trust signal a careful author is checking for; the “how to vet it” guide above walks through exactly what a legitimate CFP needs to disclose here.

Avoid the two failure modes that make a CFP either ineffective or (worse) indistinguishable from the templated calls paper mills send: a scope so vague it could fit almost any submission, and a CFP with no visible, checkable editorial ownership. Distribute the finished CFP through the same channels a legitimate CFP normally reaches researchers through — the journal’s own site and mailing list, relevant scholarly-society channels, and direct outreach to researchers actively working in the topic area — rather than mass, unsolicited email, which is itself one of the predatory-CFP red flags covered in the companion guide.

Recruiting co-editors and reviewers

A realistic reviewer pool is usually the single biggest determinant of whether a special issue stays on schedule. Build the pool before the CFP closes, not after submissions start arriving: identify reviewers by topic sub-area so incoming manuscripts can be routed quickly, confirm availability across the issue’s whole submission-to-decision window (not just at the moment you ask), and keep a working list larger than you expect to need, since special-issue reviewer fatigue and decline rates run higher than for a journal’s ordinary submission flow simply because the timeline is compressed and many invitees are being asked for the first time by an editor outside their usual journal relationships. Where the topic and journal allow it, using standing editorial-board members as co-reviewers or as a secondary sign-off for guest-editor decisions is one of the oversight mechanisms COPE’s guidance on guest-edited collections specifically recommends, and it is also simply good practice: it gives a newer or first-time guest editor a second, experienced set of eyes on close calls.

Running the editorial workflow, stage by stage

Once the CFP is live, the guest editor’s job shifts from planning to operating a compressed version of the journal’s ordinary editorial pipeline:

Initial screening. Confirm scope fit and basic completeness before sending anything to review — a manuscript that’s plainly out of scope should get a fast, courteous decline rather than sitting in the queue, the same discipline that governs ordinary desk rejection at the parent journal.
Reviewer assignment. Match manuscripts to reviewers from the pool built above, watching specifically for conflicts of interest between authors, reviewers, and the guest editors themselves — see the conflict-of-interest section below.
Tracking and reminders. Special issues routinely fall behind schedule at the reviewer-response stage; a simple status tracker (submission date, reviewer assignment date, reminder dates, decision date) per manuscript, checked weekly, is what actually keeps a compressed timeline from silently slipping by months.
Decision letters. Write decisions the same way a standing editor would — a clear accept/minor revision/major revision/reject recommendation grounded in the reviews, not a bare pass-through of reviewer comments. The guest editor’s recommendation typically still needs sign-off from the editor-in-chief or a supervising handling editor before it’s final, since final editorial accountability for the issue remains with the journal, not the guest editor alone.
Revisions and re-review. Keep the same reviewers on a revised manuscript where possible for consistency, and set a firm re-submission deadline given the collection’s overall timeline.

Conflicts of interest and editorial independence — the craft version

This is the point where good craft and the integrity concerns covered elsewhere on this site meet directly, so it’s worth being explicit rather than treating it as boilerplate. COPE’s guidance on guest-edited collections recommends limiting contributions from the guest editors and their close colleagues to a small part of the collection’s overall content, specifically to avoid the appearance (or reality) of a special issue functioning as a vehicle for the editor’s own network. In practice, that means:

If you, as guest editor, want to submit your own work to the issue, that manuscript needs to be handled end-to-end by someone else — a co-guest-editor with no conflict, or the journal’s own editor-in-chief — with you recused entirely from its review and decision. Say this explicitly in the CFP or the issue’s editorial notes so it’s on the record, not assumed.
Disclose any relationship between yourself and a submitting author that could look like undue influence, the same standard covered generally at Conflict of Interest (COI) in Research, applied specifically to the editor’s role rather than the author’s.
If a submission raises a research-integrity concern during review — suspected duplicate submission, an authorship dispute, or something more serious — escalate to the editor-in-chief rather than resolving it unilaterally; COPE’s editorial flowcharts set out the standard process editors are expected to follow for exactly these situations, and a guest editor is expected to use the same process a standing editor would.

Handling these well is not a separate compliance chore bolted onto the “real” job — it’s part of what makes a special issue a credible, citable collection rather than the kind of guest-edited issue that ends up the subject of a retraction investigation. For the publisher-side version of this same concern (how journals vet and oversee guest editors in the first place), see Guest Editor Vetting.

When things go wrong: common problems and how to handle them

Too few submissions. If the CFP closes with a thin pool, resist the temptation to relax scope standards to hit a target article count — a short, coherent collection reads better than a padded one. Extending the deadline once, with clear communication to the editor-in-chief and to authors who already submitted, is generally preferable to lowering the bar.
A reviewer goes silent. Set a hard reminder cadence (typically two reminders at fixed intervals, per most journals’ standard reviewer-management practice) before reassigning to a backup reviewer — this is exactly why the reviewer pool needs to be built larger than the minimum in the first place.
An author disputes a decision. Route this through the journal’s normal appeals process rather than an informal back-and-forth; if you’re on the receiving end of an appeal rather than issuing one, the same structured approach in How to Write an Appeal Letter to a Journal Editor describes what a properly substantiated appeal looks like from the author’s side, which is useful context for judging one as an editor.
A submission needs to be checked for authorship irregularities. Use the same reference points a standing editor would, including COPE’s flowchart on ghost, guest, or gift authorship — note this is a different “guest” than the one in this guide’s title: it refers to guest authorship (someone credited without meeting authorship criteria), not the guest-editor role itself, a naming collision worth flagging so the two aren’t confused mid-review.

Closing out: compiling and publishing the issue

Once the accepted manuscripts are in hand, the guest editor’s remaining tasks are largely organizational: confirming final production-ready versions with authors, sequencing the collection (many editors write a short editorial introduction framing the issue as a whole, distinct from any individual article), and coordinating with the journal’s production team on whether the collection publishes as a bound, simultaneous issue or as individual articles released on a rolling basis as each clears production, folded retroactively into the special-issue landing page — publisher practice varies here, and it’s worth confirming which model your specific journal uses early, since it affects how you communicate expected publication timing to authors throughout the process.

Frequently asked questions

How long does guest-editing a special issue actually take, start to finish?

There’s no universal figure, but publisher guidance gives a useful planning anchor: Elsevier’s own guest-editor documentation describes roughly nine months from proposal acceptance to final manuscript acceptance as typical, with first-round decisions expected back to authors in about four to six weeks. Treat that as a baseline to adjust for your field’s typical review cycle and your journal’s specific practice, not a fixed number.

Can I include my own paper in a special issue I’m guest-editing?

Generally yes, but only if it’s handled by someone else with genuine editorial authority over that one decision — a co-editor or the editor-in-chief — with you recused from its review and decision entirely, and COPE guidance recommends keeping the guest editors’ and their close colleagues’ own contributions to a small share of the overall collection. Check your specific journal’s policy; some restrict or disclose this more formally than others.

What’s the difference between a guest editor and a journal’s standing associate or handling editor?

A guest editor is recruited for one themed collection and typically isn’t a permanent, previously-vetted member of the journal’s editorial board, whereas a standing associate or handling editor holds an ongoing appointment and handles manuscripts across the journal’s regular flow. The guest editor’s decisions on the special issue still sit under the editor-in-chief’s overall accountability for the journal.

Who approves a special-issue proposal?

Typically the journal’s editor-in-chief (or co-editors-in-chief), often informed by editorial-board input, evaluating the proposal on topical fit, timeliness, feasibility, and the strength of the proposed guest-editor team — this is described directly in Elsevier’s and Wiley’s published guest-editor guidance.

Is a special issue peer-reviewed the same way as a regular submission?

At reputable journals, yes — publisher guidance is explicit that special-issue submissions go through the same peer-review process as regular submissions, just organized by the guest editor on a defined timeline rather than routed through the journal’s standing editorial roster. A collection that skips or shortcuts genuine peer review is exactly the pattern the integrity-focused content linked at the top of this page describes as a red flag.

Guest-Editing a Journal Special Issue: Writing the CFP and Managing the Editorial Workflow

Ask about Guest-Editing a Journal Special Issue: Writing the CFP and Managing the Editorial Workflow