Special Issues for the Journal of Transport and Land Use
The Journal of Transport and Land Use (JTLU) supports the production of special issues. The topic of the special issue needs to be relevant for the research community and fall into the scope of JTLU. Special issues are led by guest editors who are experts in the field of this special issue. Commonly, a special issue has five to ten papers, and the guest editors have the opportunity to provide an introduction to the special issue.
The guest editors organize the peer review process for each paper in the special issue, which must follow the JTLU guidelines. A minimum of two reviewers is required for each paper. The reviewers must represent expertise in the relevant field and have no close links to paper authors. Guest Editors will be required to sign an agreement document that confirms they understand and accept their responsibilities and undertake to fulfil them to the highest standards of editorial integrity.
After the peer review process, guest editors can make publication recommendations to the JTLU editorial team. Each publication recommendation must be approved by an assigned JTLU journal editor prior to sending out the paper acceptance notice. All articles published within a special issue follow the same format as regular JTLU papers: They are open access and require the payment of an open-access fee.
Proposals for special issues in JTLU may be submitted anytime, and a committee at JTLU will review proposals and decide in coordination with the editor-in-chief whether a proposal can be accepted. The proposal review process will typically take 3-4 weeks.
For questions, please contact João de Abreu e Silva (jabreu@tecnico.ulisboa.pt) or Rolf Moeckel (rolf.moeckel@tum.de).
A proposal for a special issue should include the following information:
- Title of the special issue
- Names and affiliations of the guest editor(s) (commonly no more than three guest editors)
- If any of the guest editors have experience with special issues, please specify.
- Focus of the special issue, indicating its rationale, importance, relevance, innovation and timeliness (300 to 500 words)
- Alignment with JTLU Scope (up to 200 words)
- Potential contributors and dissemination of the call for papers for this special issue. If there is already a set of proposed papers, provide authors names and affiliations, titles and (if available) abstracts
- Relationship with a Conference/Meeting (Yes/No). If related to a Conference/Meeting, describe the peer review or paper screening process
- Number of expected submissions
- Proposed timeline
Proposals will be evaluated based on the following criteria:
- Alignment with JTLU scope
- The rationale, coherence and innovativeness of the proposal
- Timeliness of the proposal
- Track record of the guest editors
- If the special issue proposal includes a set of proposed papers: track record of the authors and (if available) quality of the submitted abstracts
