Climatic Change - Guidelines for proposing a Topical Collection in Climatic Change

Please submit proposals for topical collections to the Climatic Change office (climaticchng@wesleyan.edu).  The proposal should include: 

• a description of the overall theme, purpose, and value of the topical collection, 
• a preliminary table of contents, including titles, authors, and a short description of each paper (a sentence or two, at a minimum, or a brief outline or abstract), 
• a tentative timeline of dates for submission of articles, review period (accounting for initial review, revision, and re-review time), and publication (these dates are flexible and may be updated during the review process), and
• a list of all guest editors and contact information (email and mailing address, phone number, and institutional affiliation).  
• Please identify a guest editor who will assume primary responsibility for administration of the review process.

The proposal should identify potential synergies, cross-cutting issues, and overlapping content as well as the general context for the topical collection.  Climatic Change gives preference to topical collections that are consistent with the aims of the journal to promote interdisciplinary research or research that is relevant to an international audience.  Thus, proposals that are more regionally focused are advised to demonstrate how the conclusions and insights may be applicable beyond the area of study; case studies are discouraged.
The length of a typical issue is approximately 200 printed pages for a single collection (roughly 325 double-spaced manuscript pages) up to approximately 350 printed pages for a double collection (roughly 550 double-spaced manuscript pages).  Smaller collections of papers (less than 100 pages or 8 articles) may be published as a Topical Collection along with regular articles in a combined collection.  Please note that Climatic Change requests a 10,000 word-equivalent maximum per article (16 printed pages), including all text, figures, and tables (figures and tables are counted as 300 words each).  Some leniency is extended up to 20%, but excessively long submissions will be returned to the authors to shorten.

Open Access may be purchased for individual articles before the article is published online; a 15% discount may apply if the entire topical collection is Open Access.  If you intend on having the topical collection fully Open Access, please inform us before the first paper of the topical collection is accepted in order to qualify for the discount. 

The proposal will be reviewed by the Editors-in-Chief and a Deputy Editor knowledgeable in the subject area of the topical collection, who will oversee the topical collection.

Once the topical collection proposal has been approved by Climatic Change editors, the Guest Editor(s) will

1. Submit a list of potential reviewers (at least three per article; six is recommended) for each submission to Climatic Change for approval by a Deputy Editor, who will review the suggestions and may suggest additional potential reviewers; the reviewer position, institution, and email should be included; the length of time for the review process may be shortened if Guest Editors contact the reviewers in advance to get their agreement to review.
2. Instruct authors to submit manuscripts online through www.editorialmanager.com/clim (this opens in a new tab); select Article Type: “<Guest Editor Name> Topical Collection”; authors should clearly state in the “Author Comments” section that their paper is intended for the topical collection and provide the name of the Guest Editor; all incoming submissions are monitored for length by the publisher’s journal assistant and any manuscript over 10,000 words will be returned to the author to reduce the length in compliance with the journal policy (each submission is granted three “free” figures that do not count toward the 10,000 word upper limit); general Instructions for Authors are available on the Springer website: www.springer.com/clim (this opens in a new tab).
3. Be assigned editor privileges in Editorial Manager, our online manuscript tracking system for submitting manuscripts to Climatic Change; the primary Guest Editor will receive all incoming submissions to the topical collection and will be able to transfer submission assignments to Guest Co-Editors.
4. Administer the review process of submissions through Editorial Manager, including soliciting reviews, following up with late or non-responsive reviewers, inviting revisions, and recommending final decisions to our editors; where the primary Guest Editor is an author, please identify an appropriate Guest Co-Editor to oversee the review; our Deputy Editor will administer the review process for those submissions where all the Guest Editors are co-authors, e.g., the introduction.
   Although the Guest Editors are primarily responsible for the review process, all final decisions on submissions are approved by the Deputy Editor and Editors-in-Chief.  Guest Editors are responsible for make recommendations on the final decision that summarize the review process, the necessary revisions made by the authors, and the rationale for the decision.  It is the responsibility of Climatic Change editors (Deputy Editors and Editors-in-Chief) to ensure that all accepted submissions meet the same standards of publication as regular submissions to the journal, with some allowance for interdisciplinarity that may be present at the level of the topical collection overall, but more narrowly reflected in individual articles (e.g., summary articles or case studies).
5. Prepare an introduction for the topical collection that summarizes its scope, content, and contributions to the field of Climatic Change. The introduction should touch on each paper in the topical collection and provide a sentence or two summarizing the main points and how it fits into the broader context of the topical collection. For example, the introduction might incorporate themes and other content from the original topical collection proposal, updated to reflect the collection as it has developed, as opposed to as it was conceived at the outset. The introduction may also be expanded to include further analysis and synthesis that goes beyond a summary of the topical collection articles.  Introductions summarizing the collection without additional original content will generally be reviewed "in-house" by the editorial team using the standard Editorial Manager review interface. Introductions containing original synthesis/analysis will be treated as standalone submissions and undergo external review.
6. Advise the Climatic Change office of any changes to the topical collection.

For further information, please contact the Climatic Change office at climaticchnge@wesleyan.edu (this opens in a new tab) 

Revised 01/12/22