Special Issue Guidelines
Purpose: This page provides public-facing guidance for proposing and managing Special Issues or Special Sections in IEEE Data Descriptions. It incorporates IEEE PRAC recommended guardrails for formal written policies, Guest Editor training and vetting, limits on Guest Editor publications, conflict-of-interest controls, and diversity of authorship.
1. Purpose of a Special Issue
IEEE Data Descriptions welcomes proposals for Special Issues and Special Sections that bring together high-quality data-description papers on timely, important, and emerging topics within the journal’s scope. Special Issues can help the journal highlight areas of growing interest, attract new communities of authors and readers, and support the publication of well-documented, reusable, and citable datasets.
- Emerging data collection methods, instrumentation, or platforms;
- High-value datasets in engineering, computing, energy, health, transportation, environment, AI, robotics, or related areas;
- Data standards, benchmarks, metadata, reproducibility, and data-sharing practices;
- Data resources supporting rapidly developing research fields;
- Community datasets associated with major research programs, competitions, workshops, or technical initiatives.
A Special Issue should not be used to promote a narrow group of authors, a single institution, or a closed research network. Proposals must demonstrate that the topic has sufficient breadth, community interest, and potential for high-quality submissions.
2. Guest Editor Team
Each Special Issue proposal must include a Guest Editor team with appropriate subject-matter expertise, editorial maturity, and community reach. The proposed Guest Editors should collectively demonstrate:
- A strong and recent publication record in the proposed topic area;
- Experience with peer review, editorial service, conference organization, standards development, or research leadership;
- Institutional, geographic, and disciplinary diversity where appropriate;
- A commitment to IEEE publication ethics and transparent editorial practices.
IEEE Data Descriptions will appoint a senior member of its Editorial Board to work with the Guest Editor team for each approved Special Issue or Special Section. The appointed member will guide the team and oversee adherence to journal policies and editorial standards.
3. Guest Editor Eligibility and Disclosure
All proposed Guest Editors must disclose:
- Current institutional affiliation;
- Relevant editorial roles in journals, conferences, books, or special issues;
- Any current or recent Guest Editor appointments for other Special Issues or Special Sections;
- Potential conflicts of interest with likely contributors, sponsoring organizations, workshops, or conferences connected to the proposal;
- Any other information that may reasonably affect editorial independence or perceived impartiality.
The Editor-in-Chief may verify Guest Editor affiliations, publication records, editorial histories, and other relevant information before approving a Special Issue. The journal may decline Guest Editor candidates where there are concerns about editorial overload, conflicts of interest, insufficient expertise, or potential ethical risk.
4. Guest Editor Publications in the Special Issue
Each Guest Editor may publish at most one peer-reviewed article in the Special Issue or Special Section they edit, regardless of author order. Guest Editor submissions must be handled independently under Section 6.
The Guest Editor team may publish one joint editorial introduction per Special Issue or Special Section, separate from the one-article publication limit. The editorial should normally be 1–3 pages and may summarize the theme, motivation, accepted papers, and broader importance of the issue or section. The editorial must not introduce new peer-reviewed research results.
5. Limits on Contributions by Individual Authors
To encourage a broad range of contributors, no individual may be listed as an author on more than two paper submissions to the same Special Issue or Special Section, regardless of author order. Guest Editors are also subject to the one-article publication limit in Section 4.
The Editor-in-Chief may apply stricter limits where needed to ensure that the Special Issue represents a broad community rather than a narrow collaboration network.
6. Peer Review and Editorial Independence
Submissions to a Special Issue or Special Section follow the same editorial screening and peer-review standards as regular IEEE Data Descriptions submissions. Acceptance is not guaranteed by invitation, workshop participation, prior presentation, or association with the Guest Editor team.
Each manuscript must be evaluated for:
- Fit with the journal’s scope;
- Quality and completeness of the dataset description;
- Availability, accessibility, and documentation of the dataset;
- Reproducibility and reuse potential;
- Ethical, privacy, security, and legal considerations;
- Adequacy of metadata, licensing, and long-term access;
- Technical soundness and clarity of presentation.
Guest Editors are responsible for recommending qualified, independent reviewers and supporting a timely review process. However, final editorial authority remains with IEEE Data Descriptions and its Editor-in-Chief or assigned Editorial Board leadership.
Where conflicts of interest arise, the affected Guest Editor must be recused from handling the manuscript. The Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor-in-Chief, or another designated senior editor will manage conflicted submissions.
The Editor-in-Chief or a designated senior editor will handle any manuscript authored or co-authored by a Guest Editor. The handling editor must be free of conflicts and outside the Guest Editor team and will oversee reviewer selection, peer review, and the editorial decision. The Guest Editor team will take no part in handling the manuscript.
7. Ethics, Conflicts of Interest, and Misconduct Prevention
Special Issues must follow IEEE publication ethics, conflict-of-interest requirements, and peer-review standards. Guest Editors must not use their role to favour colleagues, students, collaborators, institutions, sponsors, or members of a closed research community.
The following practices are prohibited:
- Handling papers where the Guest Editor has a conflict of interest;
- Pressuring reviewers, editors, or authors;
- Encouraging citation manipulation;
- Offering guaranteed acceptance;
- Creating artificial submission networks;
- Using the Special Issue to promote low-quality, redundant, or insufficiently documented datasets;
- Bypassing normal journal peer-review standards.
IEEE Data Descriptions reserves the right to remove Guest Editors, reject submissions, cancel a Special Issue, or take other corrective action if ethical, editorial, or quality concerns arise.
8. Proposal Requirements
A Special Issue proposal should include the following information:
| Proposal item | What to include |
|---|---|
| Proposed title | A concise and descriptive title for the Special Issue or Special Section. |
| Rationale and significance | A short explanation of why the topic is timely, important, and appropriate for IEEE Data Descriptions. |
| Scope and themes | The main topics, dataset types, methods, domains, or communities the Special Issue will cover. |
| Expected contribution to the journal | How the Special Issue will attract strong submissions, expand readership, support data reuse, and strengthen the journal’s profile. |
| Guest Editor team | Names, affiliations, email addresses, brief biographies, relevant expertise, and editorial experience for each proposed Guest Editor. |
| Guest Editor disclosures | Disclosure of current editorial roles, other Special Issue appointments, conflicts of interest, and related workshops, conferences, projects, or organizations. |
| Target author community | The communities, conferences, working groups, standards groups, or research networks from which submissions may be solicited. |
| Proposed timeline | Suggested dates for call-for-papers release, submission deadline, first decision, revised submission deadline, final decision, and publication. |
| Promotion plan | Planned outreach activities, such as announcements through IEEE societies, conferences, workshops, mailing lists, standards groups, research networks, or social media. |
| Estimated number of submissions and accepted papers | A realistic estimate of expected submissions and publishable papers. |
| Draft call for papers | A proposed call for papers including topic description, submission instructions, important dates, and Guest Editor names. |
9. Proposal Review and Approval
Special Issue proposals will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief and, where appropriate, by members of the IEEE Data Descriptions Editorial Board or sponsoring IEEE organizational units.
Proposals will be assessed based on:
- Relevance to the journal’s scope;
- Timeliness and importance of the topic;
- Breadth and quality of the expected author community;
- Qualifications and independence of the Guest Editor team;
- Adequacy of the proposed timeline;
- Editorial feasibility;
- Ethical and conflict-of-interest considerations;
- Potential contribution to the visibility, quality, and impact of IEEE Data Descriptions.
Approval of a Special Issue proposal does not guarantee acceptance of any submitted manuscript.
10. Responsibilities of Guest Editors
Approved Guest Editors are expected to:
- Follow all IEEE Data Descriptions editorial policies;
- Complete editorial and publication ethics onboarding before handling manuscripts;
- Promote the Special Issue responsibly and accurately;
- Help identify qualified independent reviewers;
- Manage reviews for assigned manuscripts in a timely and professional manner when free of conflicts;
- Avoid and disclose conflicts of interest;
- Maintain confidentiality of manuscripts and reviews;
- Communicate regularly with the journal’s editorial leadership;
- Support the preparation of a short editorial introduction after final paper selection.
Guest Editors who do not follow journal policies or timelines may be replaced at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief.
11. Submission and Review Process for Authors
Authors submitting to a Special Issue must follow the standard IEEE Data Descriptions author guidelines. Manuscripts must be submitted through the journal’s official submission system and must clearly indicate the relevant Special Issue or Special Section.
All papers must meet the journal’s standards for data availability, documentation, metadata, licensing, ethics, privacy, and reproducibility. Papers that are out of scope, insufficiently documented, ethically problematic, or not suitable for peer review may be rejected without external review.
12. Special Issue Editorial
After the accepted papers have been finalized, the Guest Editor team may prepare a short editorial introduction of 1–3 pages. The editorial may describe the motivation for the Special Issue, summarize the accepted papers, and identify future directions for the field.
The editorial is not a vehicle for new research findings and does not replace the peer-reviewed contributions in the Special Issue.
13. How to Submit a Proposal
Special Issue proposals should be sent to the IEEE Data Descriptions Editor-in-Chief at: [email protected].
Please include “Special Issue Proposal: [Proposed Title]” in the subject line.
Proposals must be submitted using the Special Issue Proposal Template. The journal may request revisions, additional disclosures, changes to the Guest Editor team, or adjustments to the timeline before approval.