TCS Special Issues - Instructions for Guest Editors

Special issues of

On request from the guest editor - who must supply address labels - up to 150 free copies of the completed special issue will be sent by Elsevier to participants in the event in question.

Proposals

Proposals for special issues of TCS should be sent by email to either Giorgio Ausiello for TCS-A, Don Sannella for TCS-B, Grzegorz Rozenberg for TCS-C, or to some combination of these for a special issue that includes aspects of more than one of TCS-A, TCS-B and TCS-C. A proposal does not need to be long or presented in a highly polished fashion, but it should include the following information:

1. Information about the topic or event in question and why this is a suitable basis for a special issue of TCS.
2. Name and contact information of the guest editor(s).
3. Planned schedule with dates for submission of papers, notification of acceptance/rejection, submission of final versions, and when the final manuscript will be ready for printing. Please be realistic, while taking into account the importance of timely publication.
4. Approximate number of papers and number of pages overall.
5. Something to justify an expectation that there will be sufficient high-quality papers to fill a special issue. For a special issue based on an event, this would normally be the final programme of the event in question with abstracts of accepted papers. (Only in exceptional circumstances will a proposal for a special issue be accepted before the final programme of the event is available.) For a special issue on a focused topic, this might include a list of authors who have tentatively agreed to contribute papers.
6. Pointers to the proceedings and/or special issues (of TCS or other journals) that have been published or are being put together for previous versions of the same event, if any.

Once a proposal has been accepted

The content of special issues and management of the editorial process are the guest editor(s) sole responsibility. This includes issuing invitations to contribute, arranging refereeing of submissions to journal standard, and deciding on acceptance/rejection. An exception is where the guest editor wishes to include a paper of his/her own; such submissions will be handled by the editor-in-chief to avoid a conflict of interest. The editors-in-chief are happy to provide advice regarding other submissions to guest editors on request. In cases where an open call for contributions is to be issued, you can arrange to link a copy of the call from the main TCS web page by sending email to Jessica Bradley at Elsevier. For a special issue based on an event, it is important to issue invitations promptly, before authors decide to submit extended versions of their papers elsewhere. For such special issues, the refereeing process may be shortened by involving members of the event's programme committee who handled the original submission. Although another way of speeding up the review process is to ask authors of submissions to the special issue to referee each other's papers, judgements of quality that come mainly from within a closed community should be avoided.

Authors who use LaTeX should be encouraged to use Elsevier's elsarticle document style which can be downloaded from here. The standard required for papers appearing in special issues of TCS is the same as that of regular TCS papers. A difference with respect to regular TCS submissions is that there is no time for lengthy iteration in the refereeing process. Any paper that will require substantial revision to be acceptable, delaying the completion of the entire special issue, may (with the author's agreement) be forwarded to the editors-in-chief, together with referee reports, for consideration as a regular TCS submission.

Completion

Once the entire process is complete, the guest editor(s) forwards the finished product by e-mail to the TCS editorial office at tcs@elsevier.com, stating which section of the journal the issue is intended for (A, B, C, joint A/B, etc.)

The following is required in two separate zip or tar files:

File 1

1. Final versions of all the accepted contributions. For each contribution, provide both printable form (pdf or ps) and source form (LaTeX or Word).
2. Title of the special issue and the name and affiliation of the guest editor(s). For a special issue based on an event, the title of the special issue would normally be the full name of the event, not an acronym, minus words like "International", "Conference", "47th", "2003", "Colloquium" etc. For example: the special issue of TCS on ICALP 2002, which was the 29th International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, has the title: Automata, Languages and Programming. For a major event, the title can include the acronym and year as well. For example: Automata, Languages and Programming (ICALP 2002).
3. An indication of the ordering of the accepted papers within the special issue. (The default ordering is alphabetic by author.) For each contribution, provide the corresponding author's email address.
4. A preface for the special issue that explains the background of the event and/or the importance of the topic. Again, printable form and source form are required. It should be clear from the preface that contributions have been refereed to journal standard and, if the special issue is based on papers presented at an event, that the contributions are extended versions of those papers. A summary of the contribution of each paper is optional but welcome.

File 2

1. Referee reports for each accepted paper. Please supply dates of submission/revision/acceptance if available.
2. Number of rejected papers or other evidence that the selection process was taken seriously.

Questions concerning the delivery of the final manuscript should be addressed to the TCS editorial office at tcs@elsevier.com.

Backlog

Timely publication of special issues is very important. Elsevier has accelerated the TCS publishing schedule in order to reduce the backlog to six months (plus time for copy editing, proof reading etc.). But this countdown does not begin until the final manuscript of the special issue is received by the TCS editorial office. Guest editors of special issues, authors and referees need to work together to avoid delays. Serious slippage of the schedule with respect to the original proposal might lead to permission to produce a special issue being withdrawn or final approval being denied.