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What is a Special Issue?

IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society Special Issues are a collection of articles that focus on specific research topics, which fall within the scope of the IEEE Communications Society.

Special Issues are created by Guest Editors and/or Associate Editors, once their proposal is accepted by the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society Editorial Committee. Each Special Issue will include an editorial that introduces the collection of at least four articles on the topic. Completed Special Issues are grouped together in the IEEE Xplore® digital library.

Submit a Proposal for a Special Issue

Researchers who plan to submit a proposal for a Special Issue to the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, should prepare the proposal according to the following guidelines: 

  1. The title, topic and scope of the proposed Special Issue should be included. It is important to describe why the proposed topic is timely and significant.
  2. A brief outline of the proposed Special Issue should be provided, indicating the areas in which papers will be solicited.
  3. The Guest Editors should be identified (Special Issues usually involve five to six Guest Editors). They should be selected such that a good technical, geographical and gender balance is achieved.
  4. The bios of the proposed Guest Editors should be included.
  5. The proposed call-for-papers should be provided.
  6. Effective from 3 November 2022, the Guest Editors of currently active special issues cannot be in the Guest Editor team of new Special Issue proposals.

The proposal needs to be emailed to the EiC (Sinem Coleri) and Associate EiCs (Rui Dinis, Derrick Wing Kwan Ng, and Ana Garcia Armada)

Who can submit to a Special Issue ?

Any researcher who is expert in the field of the proposed Special Issue can submit an article to the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society. During article submission through the ScholarOne Manuscript Central, authors should select the Special Issue from the pull-down menu of “Manuscript type” in the first page of the submission process. To avoid conflict of interests, Guest Editors of a Special Issue cannot submit papers to that particular Special Issue.