Purpose and Scope
Special issues, thematic collections and conference-derived content are held to the same standards as regular content. This policy establishes the minimum safeguards every journal operating under the LMI publishing framework shall apply whenever editorial authority for a defined body of content is entrusted, in whole or part, to a guest editor or external arrangement.
Appointment and Oversight
A guest editor shall be appointed only on the basis of documented relevant expertise, with a written record of the appointment stating the collection's scope, the guest editor's mandate and its limits, the duration of the appointment, and the guest editor's disclosed competing interests (E1). Permanent journal editorial leadership retains ultimate accountability for the collection: it shall approve the collection's scope, monitor its conduct, retain authority over final acceptance decisions or documented delegation thereof, and be able to demonstrate that every article in the collection received review meeting the journal's declared standards (B2). A collection shall never operate as an autonomous journal-within-a-journal.
Independence and Conflict Safeguards
Guest editors operate under Editorial Independence & Non-Interference (A3): appointment confers editorial responsibility within the mandate, never commercial or ownership authority, and no sponsor, funder or proposer of a collection acquires influence over scholarly decisions. A guest editor’s own submission is prohibited during the appointment under the next section and shall be rejected administratively. Manuscripts from close collaborators, students, supervisors or other persons with whom the guest editor has a material competing interest shall be reassigned to independent editorial authority and the reassignment recorded under Editorial Governance & Editorial-Conflict Standards (B1) and Competing Interests & Funding Disclosure (E1).
Publication by Guest Editors
For the duration of their appointment, guest editors are treated as serving editors of the journal for the purposes of B1's absolute same-journal publication prohibition. Accordingly, a serving guest editor shall not author, co-author, submit or publish scholarly content in the collection they manage or elsewhere in the journal during the appointment. No handling arrangement cures this; B1's terms apply in full. Submission after the appointment has formally ended follows the journal's ordinary procedures.
Safeguards Against Special-Issue Manipulation
- Provenance scrutiny. Unsolicited collection proposals — particularly offering ready-made content, guaranteed volume or payment — shall be scrutinised for paper-mill origin and commercial purchase of editorial access; collections shall never be sold.
- Review integrity. Reviewer selection within a collection shall meet B2 in full, with attention to reviewer rings, reciprocal arrangements and reviewer concentration around the guest editor's network.
- Pattern monitoring. Acceptance rates, review duration, citation patterns within and toward the collection, and author concentration shall be monitorable and reviewed; artificially concentrated citation is governed by C3.
- No mass acceptance. Volume commitments, deadlines or sponsorship shall never justify acceptance without adequate review.
- Disclosure. The collection's guest editorship, provenance and any sponsorship shall be disclosed on the published collection.
Sponsorship
Sponsorship or funding of a collection is permitted only within F3: it shall be disclosed, shall be separated from editorial decisions, and shall never confer control over content, selection of guest editors, or acceptance of any manuscript.
Suspension and Termination
The journal's permanent editorial leadership, or LMI where the concern implicates that leadership (A4), may suspend or terminate a guest editorship or collection where integrity safeguards fail — including manipulation, conflict breach, review inadequacy or misrepresentation — and may withdraw unpublished collection content from the process, obtain additional review, or reassign manuscripts. Termination authority addresses the arrangement, not scholarly disagreement: individual acceptance and rejection decisions remain protected by A3, and misconduct questions proceed under C5.
Standards and Guidance
Informed by COPE guidance on guest-edited collections and special issues, and by the COPE Core Practices.