Special Issue Requests

CRIA also regularly publishes Special Issue collections which investigate a certain issue, topic or theme in detail. Guest Editors are welcome to contact us with a Special Issue proposal (including all the information outlined below). We may also commission Special Issues. This involves CRIA devising a certain Special Issue theme before sharing a call for submissions on our website and Twitter. 

Guidelines 

We judge all Special Issue proposals against the following criteria. Please note that we request all this information before making a judgement on whether to accept or reject a Special Issue proposal: 

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, the 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. 

Special Issue examples 

We welcome Special Issue proposals which take a multidisciplinary and innovative approach towards international affairs. We also consider proposals focusing on a wide range of topics. 

The following list comprises of some accepted Special Issue proposals that are either currently in the review process or have already been published: 

  • 'Human Rights and British Foreign Policy: Case Studies in Middle Power Diplomacy' 

  • ‘The Liberal International Order and the Global South: A View from Latin America' 

  • ‘Constituting modern subjects by disciplining the extremes: international histories, global hierarchies, and intersectionality in Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE)’ 

  • ‘Stories of World Politics: Between History and Fiction’