Guidelines for Special Issue Proposals

CRIA is soliciting special issue proposals that contribute to scholarly debate and which examine pertinent and topical theoretical, empirical and methodological questions. Special issue proposals that take a multidisciplinary and innovative approach towards international affairs are particularly welcome.


To be considered, proposals should include:

  1. A rationale for the Special Issue as a whole, placing its relevance with recent academic debates in IR (widely conceived)
  2. A complete list of proposed articles with regular-length (200-250 words) abstracts
  3. A proposed timeline
  4. Any information on workshops or other measures taken to work on the manuscripts before submission to CRIA
  5. Brief (2-3 sentences each) author and editor bios


Some additional information to be aware of:

  • The proposal should include a minimum of six articles and a maximum of 12; however, a smaller number of articles might be published as a Special Section.
  • Articles should be 11,000 words maximum as per usual CRIA standards.
  • All manuscripts will undergo normal peer-review. The CRIA editorial team manages the peer review process, and while we take measures to speed up the process for Special Issue manuscripts, the manuscripts will be judged by the same standard as standalone articles.
  • Depending on Guest Editor's preference, Guest Editor's introduction could either be a shorter text edited in-house or a peer-reviewed article.
  • We ask Guest Editors to keep the gender balance of authors in mind when organising the Special Issue and to also include an appropriate institutional and geographical mix.
  • All special issue proposals should be submitted to Connor O’Brien (cpo36@cam.ac.uk) and Leah Schmidt (lms201@cam.ac.uk).