Individual spontaneous proposals will no longer be accepted for consideration.

A call for proposals will be issued annually at the beginning of January, with submissions to be received by the end of March.

One proposal to be selected by the editors for publication each year. Decision to be announced by the end of June.

A member of the Board of Editors to be appointed for each Special Issue, according to expertise, to oversee the reviewing process and to ensure that guidelines and style sheets are followed correctly.

Manuscripts to be submitted to the co-ordinating author/handling editor by January the following year. Co-ordinating author and handling editor to identify three suitable referees for each manuscript.

Referees' reports to be returned by the end of April, leaving time for corrections/revisions before the copy deadline in September/October.

Proposals should include the following information:

• • name(s) and affiliation(s) of the proposing/co-ordinating author(s);

• • theme of the special issue;

• • a description, in no more than 200 words, of the research context of the topics to be covered, and the rationale for a thematic issue in this subject area;

• • names of contributing authors, their affiliations, the titles of their articles and brief abstracts (around 100 words).

Proposals will be expected to represent state of the art research in their particular area and to this end should demonstrate that contributions are representative of the wider academic community.