Special Issue Policy
A special issue extends the journal's scholarly community outward — it does not relax the journal's editorial standards.
— Editorial Policy, Creative Saplings
Section 1
Purpose and Scope of This Policy
Creative Saplings occasionally publishes Special Issues devoted to a focused theme, a conference or symposium, an emerging area of English literary and cultural studies, or a body of work curated by invited scholars. Special Issues allow the journal to deepen its engagement with a specific field while extending its editorial reach beyond the regular editorial board.
This policy governs every stage of a Special Issue — from proposal to publication — and applies in addition to, not instead of, the journal's regular Peer Review Policy, Open Access and Licensing terms, and Retraction and Plagiarism policies. Where this policy is silent, the journal's standard editorial policies apply in full. No Special Issue may depart from the journal's core peer-review, licensing, or ethical standards.
Section 2
Proposal and Approval Process
All Special Issues originate from a written proposal submitted to the Editor-in-Chief. No call for papers, guest-editor invitation, or public announcement of a Special Issue may be issued before the proposal has been formally approved.
| Proposal Element | Required Detail |
|---|---|
| Rationale | The scholarly or creative rationale for the theme, its fit within the journal's scope, and its anticipated contribution to the field |
| Guest Editor(s) | Full name, institutional affiliation, and a brief statement of relevant expertise for every proposed Guest Editor |
| Timeline | Proposed call-for-papers date, submission deadline, review window, and target publication month |
| Anticipated Scale | Estimated number of articles and expected balance between research articles, critical essays, and creative submissions |
| Disclosures | Any funding, sponsorship, institutional affiliation, or conflict of interest connected with the proposed theme or Guest Editors |
The Editor-in-Chief reviews every proposal for scholarly merit, alignment with the journal's Aims and Scope, and the suitability and independence of the proposed Guest Editor(s). The Editor-in-Chief may approve, request revisions to, or decline any proposal, and is not obliged to give reasons for declining a proposal beyond confirming that it does not meet the journal's editorial standards.
Section 3
Guest Editor Identity, Affiliation and Role
Every Special Issue is coordinated by one or more named Guest Editors whose full name, institutional affiliation, and area of expertise are published on the Special Issue's landing page and in the issue's front matter. The journal does not publish Special Issues coordinated by unnamed, anonymous, or unaffiliated editors.
Guest Editors are responsible for developing the call for papers, coordinating with authors, liaising with reviewers, and preparing an editorial introduction to the Special Issue. Guest Editors do not have final authority over acceptance, rejection, or publication decisions; that authority rests with the Editor-in-Chief and the journal's regular editorial office, as set out in Section 4.
Guest Editors must disclose any institutional, financial, or personal relationship with prospective authors, reviewers, or the funding source of the Special Issue at the time of proposal and again before the issue is finalised.
Section 4
Editor-in-Chief Oversight
The Editor-in-Chief retains full editorial authority over every Special Issue and remains accountable to the journal's readers, contributors, and indexing bodies for its content. This authority is not delegated to Guest Editors and cannot be waived by agreement between a Guest Editor and the journal.
The Editor-in-Chief retains the right to: approve or decline the Special Issue proposal; approve or remove Guest Editors; require changes to the call for papers; audit the review process at any stage; overrule a Guest Editor's recommendation where ethical or quality concerns arise; and withhold or delay publication of any article or the issue as a whole pending resolution of an editorial or ethical concern.
The final decision to accept, revise, or reject any submission to a Special Issue — including submissions authored or co-authored by a Guest Editor — is made or ratified by the Editor-in-Chief or a delegated member of the regular editorial board, not by the Guest Editor alone.
Section 5
Peer Review Standards for Special Issues
Content published in a Special Issue is held to the same review standards as content published in a regular issue. Research articles and critical essays submitted to a Special Issue undergo external double-blind peer review by at least two independent expert reviewers who are not the Guest Editor and have no conflict of interest with the author. Poetry and short fiction submitted to a Special Issue undergo editorial review by at least two qualified editors, consistent with the journal's standard practice for creative submissions.
Guest Editors may propose reviewers with relevant subject expertise, but final reviewer selection, review coordination, and adjudication of conflicting reviews remain subject to oversight by the Editor-in-Chief or the regular editorial office. No Special Issue submission is published without having completed the review track applicable to its content type.
Section 6
Conflicts of Interest
Guest Editors, reviewers, and members of the regular editorial board involved in a Special Issue must disclose any conflict of interest, including current or recent co-authorship, shared institutional affiliation, supervisory relationships, or personal relationships with an author under consideration.
Where a conflict of interest is identified, the individual concerned is recused from the review or decision-making process for that submission, and an alternative reviewer or editor without the conflict is assigned in their place. Undisclosed conflicts of interest discovered after publication are handled under the journal's Retraction and Correction Policy.
Section 7
Independent Handling of Guest-Editor Submissions
A Guest Editor who is also an author or co-author of a submission to their own Special Issue takes no part in the review, discussion, or decision-making for that submission. The submission is instead handled from receipt to final decision by the Editor-in-Chief or by another member of the regular editorial board who has no conflict of interest with the Guest Editor.
The Guest Editor is not shown the identities of reviewers assigned to their own submission, nor consulted on the outcome, until a final decision has been reached and communicated by the handling editor.
Section 8
Limits on Guest-Editor Authorship
To preserve the independence and credibility of each Special Issue, the journal limits how much of an issue's content may originate from its own Guest Editors.
| Limit | Provision |
|---|---|
| Authored / Co-Authored Content | No more than one article per Guest Editor, and no more than 20% of the total articles in a Special Issue, may be authored or co-authored by that issue's Guest Editor(s) collectively |
| Editorial Introduction | The Guest Editor's introductory or framing essay for the issue is exempt from this limit but is clearly labelled as an editorial, not a peer-reviewed research contribution, and is not counted toward the issue's peer-reviewed article total |
| Self-Citation | Guest Editors may not require or solicit authors to cite the Guest Editor's own work as a condition of acceptance |
Any submission authored or co-authored by a Guest Editor is subject to the independent handling procedure set out in Section 7, regardless of this authorship limit.
Section 9
Publication, Licensing and Metadata
Special Issues are published under the same Diamond Open Access model and the same Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence that governs the journal's regular issues. No Special Issue, and no article within it, is published under a different licence unless the Editor-in-Chief has approved and clearly documented that exception in advance, with the licence stated consistently on the article landing page, the PDF, the issue page, and the journal's deposited metadata.
Every article in a Special Issue receives a unique, complete Crossref DOI (prefix 10.56062) at the point of publication, and is indexed and preserved on the same basis as the journal's regular content, as described in the journal's Indexing, Abstracting and Digital Preservation policy.
Section 10
Post-Publication Concerns
Concerns raised after publication about a Special Issue's peer-review integrity, authorship, conflicts of interest, or editorial independence are handled by the Editor-in-Chief under the journal's standard Retraction, Correction and Complaint-Handling policies, in line with COPE guidelines. A Guest Editor's involvement in a Special Issue does not limit the journal's authority to investigate, correct, retract, or otherwise act on any article published within it.
