Special issue sections

[hickeygamez]

From time to time, our journal publishes special issues. However, we haven’t found an ideal way to organize the submissions.

Option 1:
Authors submit to the specific section of article as per usual. They then make a note in comments to the editor that they wish to submit is as a Special Issue article. The drawback is that there is no way to filter these submissions, so it requires checking for a note for each submission.

Option 2:
I make a temporary section called CALL FOR PAPERS. The authors submit every paper to this section regardless of article type. The authors could make a note in the Comments about the type of submission it is. The Special Issue editor for this section would then screen them before sending them to the actual section editors. Articles would be reassigned to their appropriate section before publication.

The problem with both these options is that it creates unnecessary extra steps either way. I am wondering if there is a way to make a check box during the submission stage to specify the intended issue.

I see this issue discussed here, but it doesn’t seem resolved:

[Solved] Submissions for special issues

Hi, Our journal has sometimes special issues. As an editor I do receive a notification of new submissions. But at the Submissions overview page in OJS it does not appear that a submission is for a specific special issue. To make clear to the editor that a submission is made for a special issue we ask the authors in the “Submission Preparation Checklist” to tell for which special issue the article has been sent in the “Comments for the Editor” window. It then appears under “Pre-review discussi…

Open Journal Systems 3.3.0.8

[mpbraendle]

Hi,

we follow option 2. For each topical issue, we create a section and ask the authors to choose the correct section during submission. See Submissions | CHIMIA and instructions for authors there.
Before publishing, we reassign the articles to the issue and the scientific articles section and delete the “issue section” afterwards.
I agree that there are unnecessary steps. However, this option helps our editor-in-chief and other editors tremendously in keeping track of our rolling submission workflow, which comprises 3-4 issues over 4 months and managing 50-60 submissions at the same time.