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Management Research News

ISSN: 0140-9174
Currently published as: Management Research Review

Online from: 1978

Subject Area: Accounting and Finance

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Special issues - why, what and how?

Downloads: The fulltext of this document has been downloaded 327 times since 2006

Article citation: Joseph Sarkis, (2006) "Special issues - why, what and how?", Management Research News, Vol. 29 Iss: 8, pp. -

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Article Type: Editorial From: Management Research News, Volume 29, Issue 8.

In this short editorial, I would like to inform our readership and scholars that we are’encouraging proposals for focused, guest edited special issues. Currently, we are working with a number of scholars on introducing some special issues. We ourselves will be trying to introduce special issues on a number of topics. Yet, the management discipline is broad, and Management Research News (MRN) covers a wide spectrum of topics. Although we (Mike Berrell and I) have expertise in some of the management disciplines, it is not comprehensive and/or deep enough to cover all possible management disciplines. Thus, we are sending out a general call to encourage scholars who are within an emergent topical area in the management disciplines to submit proposals for special issues in their field of expertise.

Special issues may have various designations, not only field specification. For example, a special issue on methodological techniques and experiences with these techniques may cover a wide spectrum of management disciplines. The goal of some special issues may be to cross fields and disciplines to address a particular management topic of recent interest, e.g. emergency preparedness or business scandals. Emerald especially encourages special issues since these issues are often very popular for most journals. The reason for this popularity is that the special issue becomes a one-stop resource that interested researchers can use as a foundation for emergent research.

Even though we encourage senior scholars to take on guest editing posts, we will not eliminate younger emerging scholars to take on some topical areas if the proposed special issue has promise. To help both senior and junior scholars, we do have some guidelines which we will provide and you will also work with either Mike Berrell or me to help guide your efforts.

Essentially, the guidelines include some planning concerning the topic, time frame, and project management, and integrity issues. Communication on a regular basis with the editorial staff would be encouraged to determine what types of timelines need to be met and whether sufficient interest and expertise exists in emerging topics to warrant a special issue. Since MRN's goal is to rapidly publish emergent research, managing a compressed timeline will be of great importance, but we will remain flexible if we feel the topic is of interest to our readership.

Part of the early project management steps is promotion of special issues. Emerald helps in some of the promotion by circulating your call for papers (a call for papers will typically be derived from a proposal). Emerald will also send it to your own mailing lists if you supply these. The Emerald journals' web site is another vehicle used to promote special issues and leaflets can be distributed at any relevant conferences attended by Emerald staff.

The review process is still required for special issues. All papers will be required to go through a form of review, with the process agreed upon by one of the MRN editors. Emerald and the editors will also provide additional details on typical review processes. In order to ensure that the integrity of the review process is maintained, the following specific points should be considered:

• If planning to include a paper of your own, please send it to the editor to have it independently reviewed by the regular Editorial Board. At this time, we would only like to have, at most, one paper from a special issue editor(s) appear in a guest special issue.
• For further independence and transparency you should provide a list of reviewers used for the Special Issue these reviewers should be different from the list of authors included in the Special Issue.

These are only some of the why, what and hows of special issues. If you are interested and have some suggestions to make on special issues, please feel free to get in touch with either of the editors or an editorial board member. We are trying to provide the best service for our readership and believe that special issues on focused topics is an important vehicle to meet this goal.

Joseph Sarkis
Editor