Part I - Application

GEs should submit their proposal for an SI to the PRL Editor-in-Chief, Special Issues (gsdb@cib.na.cnr.it).

The proposal should specify the category, a) or b), of the SI. Category a) SIs include contributed papers that are invited/searched on a specific research theme. Category b) SIs include extended versions of papers presented at international meetings of high reputation.

Moreover, the proposal should provide all details useful to support the proposal. In the case of SIs of category a), a description of the theme on which the SI will be focussing and its impact in the current research activity are requested, as well as the indication on whether open submissions are accepted, or only invited contributed papers will be considered, together with any other information considered as relevant by the GEs.
In turn, for SIs of category b), information necessary to qualify the meeting is requested such as names of conference chairs, scientific committee members and invited speakers; name of the proceedings Publisher; indication on whether the meeting is in a series of scientific events held with a scheduled periodicity; indication on whether the meeting is sponsored/endorsed by scientific associations, especially if sponsored/endorsed by the International Association for Pattern Recognition - IAPR (www.iapr.org), of which PRL is an official publication.

Finally, the proposal should include a tentative title for the SI and a planned time schedule.

Once the proposal is accepted, GEs are entitled to publicise the forthcoming SI by mail, email, on their WebPages. In particular, if a WebPage is planned for the SI, the GEs are kindly requested to put a link from it to PRL WebPage (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/patrec). In turn, the SI will be included among those listed in "Recent Special Issues" and a link to the SI WebPage will be set from that page. GEs can also send the announcement of their SI to PRL (patrec@elsevier.com) in order to have it published in the journal or in the PRL Webpage (http://www.elsevier.com/locate/patrec).

Part II - Preparation of the SI

1. An SI generally includes 8-12 papers. Thus, about 11-15 submissions should be envisaged.

2. For category a), GEs either identify and invite 11-15 potential contributors, or identify and invite a smaller core of potential contributors, leaving open to researchers in the specific field the possibility to submit to the SI. In any case, high concentration of papers coming from the same group of researcher or from the same regional geographic area should be avoided in order to guarantee that the SI can be of interest to the international readership of PRL. For category b), the GEs should select the best 11-15 papers among those presented at the meeting and invite the relative authors to submit extended versions to the SI. Extended papers treat aspects that were not considered in the conference papers, or add new experimental results obtained after the proceedings publication, or include new Figures, Tables and examples. The title of the PRL submission should differ from the title of the conference paper, which in turn should be included among the references in the PRL submission. Also in this case, a wide geographic distribution of the contributors to the SI should be taken into account. For both categories, when inviting potential contributors, make clear that submitting to the SI does not imply automatic acceptance for publication, since a regular reviewing process will be done.

3. GEs should plan the schedule for submitting, refereeing, revising and resubmitting, to the SI. In general 4-6 weeks should be allowed to reviewers for each round of refereeing and about 4 weeks to authors for preparing a revised version of their article. It's responsibility of the GEs to chase late authors and reviewers, in order they adhere to the planned time schedule.

4. GEs should select at least 2 reviewers for each submission and send to them the submissions to be reviewed as well as a sample Review Form. GEs may use their own Review Form or download the Review Form provided by PRL. For category b), the same reviewers that have already refereed the conference papers can be selected; in any case, GEs should provide the reviewers with copies of the conference papers to allow them to verify how much the SI contributions differ from the relative proceedings papers. For both categories, GEs will organise more than just one round of refereeing, if deemed necessary.

5. When the reviewing process is over, GEs provide to the Editor-in-Chief, Special Issues (gsdb@cib.na.cnr.it) the list of papers for which they recommend acceptance, LRP. At the same time, GEs officially notify about paper rejection the authors of papers that they have not included in LRP. The final acceptance decision on the papers in LRP and, hence, on the whole SI is left to the Editor-in-Chief, Special Issues, who will generally take this decision together with the GEs. Once the final decision is taken, GEs notify it to the authors of papers included in LRP. The list LRP should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, Special Issues electronically, so as to speed up the process, together with the following items:

a) All the reviewing reports of the papers recommended for acceptance. The reports should include the name of the reviewers; in case of anonymous reports, the GEs should provide a separate indication of "who refereed what".

b) The Table of Contents, ToC, indicating the title of the SI and listing all articles for which acceptance is recommended in the same order in which they should appear in the SI.

c) The editorial.

d) All articles.

e) The list of reviewers (with their email addresses). The list should include also reviewers who refereed papers that were not recommended for acceptance.

Part III - Dispatching the SI to the Elsevier Editorial Office

After the SI has been officially accepted, GEs should contact authors of accepted contributions to receive from them the final version of their papers in electronic version. Electronic version includes both the source documents (in MS Word or LaTex) of the text and of all Figures/Tables, and a printable document (PDF).

Preferred way of working (highly recommended):

The GEs will collect all electronic versions together with their Editorial, ToC, list of reviewers and metadata files in the following way:

• For each article, including the Editorial, all source files should be included with separate Figure files and a PDF version of the article, all together in one zip file. For instructions about the file format, see http://www.authors.elsevier.com (go to artwork instructions on this site).
  
  
• For each article, including the Editorial, the metadata should be provided. A copy of the metadata list can be downloaded here. All metadata of all articles should be put in an Excel file separately from the directories with the various articles (see next point).
  
  
• Each article (zipped) should be put in its own directory, named: <PATREC>-<CORRESPONDING AUTHOR NAME> (For example, PRL-Smith, or PRL-Smith1 if more than one contribution has Smith as the first author). Make sure that the article in the Excel metadata file and the directory name are easily recognisable as related to each other. Try to avoid subfolders in the directory.
  
  
• Also included separately from the directories are the Table of Contents, with the title of the SI and listing the papers in the order in which they should appear in the SI, and the list of reviewers (with their email address).
  
  
• Zip all directories and files in one large zip file, which has the name of the special issue.
  

After this has been done, the Journal Manager (PATREC@elsevier.com) and the Editor-in-Chief, Special Issue (gsdb@cib.na.cnr.it) should be notified. The Journal Manager will give further instructions concerning the transfer of the file (ftp).

Second way of working:

As an alternative, the GEs will collect all electronic versions in a CD-ROM, together with their Editorial, ToC, list of reviewers and metadata files (explained in the follow) and will mail it to PRL editorial office at the following address:

Editorial Production Organisation
Reed Elsevier Amsterdam
Attn: Rolf van der Sanden, room 10.038
Reed Elsevier Amsterdam
Radarweg 29
1043 NX Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 (0)20 485 2579

When mailing out the CD-ROM, GEs should also inform by email the Journal Manager (PATREC@elsevier.com) and the Editor-in-Chief, Special Issue (gsdb@cib.na.cnr.it).

The CD-ROM should be organised as follows.

• For each article, including the Editorial, the CD-ROM includes all source files with separate Figure files and a PDF version of the article, all together in one zip file. For instructions about the file format, see http://www.authors.elsevier.com (go to artwork instructions on this site).
  
  
• For each article, including the Editorial, the metadata should be provided. A copy of the metadata list can be downloaded here. All metadata of all articles should be put in an Excel file and copied in the CD-ROM separately from the directories with the various articles (see next point).
  
  
• Each article (zipped) should be put in the CD-ROM in its own directory, named: <PATREC>-<CORRESPONDING AUTHOR NAME> (For example, PRL-Smith, or PRL-Smith1 if more than one contribution has Smith as the first author). Make sure that the article in the Excel metadata file and the directory name are easily recognisable as related to each other.
  
  
• The CD-ROM also includes the Table of Contents, with the title of the SI and listing the papers in the order in which they should appear in the SI, and the list of reviewers (with their email address)