American Institute of Mathematical Sciences

Discrete & Continuous Dynamical Systems - S

Instructions for Guest Editors

Though editing a (theme/topic) special issue requires some commitment and responsibility, it provides the guest editors with an invaluable experience and opportunity. DCDS-S takes pride in offering our guest editors the freedom of choosing the topics and the contributing authors. Guest editors are encouraged to be creative and forward-thinking in selecting the theme/topics. As a token of appreciation, all guest editors will be granted free access to all of the DCDS journals for one year.

Guest editors and the editorial board share the responsibility of ensuring the high quality of the issues they organize. The guest editors are expected to closely follow the Guidelines, and to manage a rigorous peer review for each submission. After the proposal for the special issue is accepted, the organization and review process can be broadly summarized in the following steps:

1.   A unique submission link via EditFlow will be created for the special issue. Guest editors are granted the editor’s access in EditFlow for the special issue.
2.   All manuscripts must be submitted via the unique submission link, which is provided to the authors by the guest editors. The link cannot be shared with others.
3.   The guest editors send invitations via EditFlow to individuals who they believe would be qualified reviewers. As responses are received, invitations of new reviewers may be issued until 2 acceptances of the invitations are obtained.
4.   The guest editors consider all the reviews/reports before making a recommendation. Additional reviewers may be invited if the returned reviews differ widely.
5.   If a revision is needed, the guest editors send a notification via EditFlow to the authors including the recommendation and any relevant reviewer comments. After a revision is submitted, the guest editors shall seek opinion from the reviewers, or conduct a follow-up review by themselves when only minor changes are requested.
6.   The guest editors make a recommendation (acceptance or rejection) to the Editor-in-Chief, who in turn makes a final decision and notify the authors of the final decision.
7.   Once accepted, the authors need to submit the source files in the journal’s templates and copyright forms, all via EditFlow.
8.   A window of submissions for each special issue is 6 months; while the reviewing process for each submission should be done within 4 months.
9.   The Editor in Chief may choose to return any submission back to the authors without a review if there are concerns about the quality, short notes of less than 15 pages, the exposition of the paper, or having too many artificially listed references, etc.