Guide for Editors

Dear Editors,

Thank you for considering editing a guest collection in Roadsides. The following Guide for Editors will help you understand the application and publication process.

The Editorial Board takes decisions on guest collections. The proposed collection must receive initial approval from the Editorial Board before CfP can be published. The decision on upcoming collections is made during the annual Board meeting in early December. In our discussions we consider both the quality of the proposal and also the urgency of the topic. Please pay attention to the submission and publication timeline, which both require a long breath. For example, during the Editorial Board meeting in December 2024 we will decide which edited collections will be published in 2026.

There is an annual deadline for the submission of collection proposals. Guest editors are requested to submit their proposals by mid-November at the latest. Proposals should be sent per email to the Editors-in-Chief Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi (agnieszka.joniak@unifr.ch) and Tina Harris (C.H.Harris@uva.nl), and include the following:

(1) title of the proposed edited collection

(2) a 2-3 page outline of the collection’s conceptual contribution to infrastructure studies and its significance; please also situate the planned collection in the current publishing landscape and in the publication history of Roadsides

(3) CV of the guest editors

(4) a timeline for Call for Papers and publication

(5) available funding to support OA publishing (in the budget of your grant, at your institution etc). It is not obligatory to have such funding in order to publish in Roadsides. However, if you have access to such funding, we would be happy to discuss how you can participate in the collection’s production costs as we have no stable funding source and rely on donations. 

For the editors of accepted proposals

Please read this guide carefully and clarify any questions with the Editors-in-Chief before you start. An Excel spreadsheet, stored in the Roadsides cloud-drive folder, will guide you through the editorial process. You will receive a link to it in due time.

It is useful to be aware that:

1. 1. Roadsides is published biannually, in April and November. We publish a CfP on the Roadsides website six months before the issue’s publication date – i.e. in early May for the fall issue, and in early October for the spring issue. The length of CfP is usually around 200 words. Please find an image that can be used as both a teaser for the CfP and as the cover for the issue (you must clarify copyright for this image). Each CfP is open for up to three weeks. All contributors are solicited through the CfP.
   2. Please send the Guide for Authors (https://roadsides.net/guide-for-authors) to all provisionally accepted contributors. Provide a few links to earlier articles published in Roadsides in order to familiarize them with the journal’s design and style.
   3. Authors should submit their papers via Open Journal System (OJS). They will be provided with the registration link by the Managing Editor. In order to complete submission, authors need to submit all the integral parts of the article:
      a) the main text, including endnotes, image captions and image/artist’s credits embedded in the text
      b) a complete list of references
      c) numbered images/tables/graphs/videos/audio material (for favoured file types, see Guide for Authors)
      d) a short bio (max. 150 words)
      e) acknowledgments (if any)
      f) a headshot in high resolution (B&W or colour).
   4. Please remember to mention the names of all the reviewers and thank them in your editorial Introduction. We labour concertedly to make the important work of the reviewers more visible in the publication process and really value their involvement. You may, for instance, consider citing some of the reviews in your editorial Introduction. The reviewers’ names will also be published on the Roadsides website.
      
   5. Roadsides is a double-‘open’ peer-reviewed journal. This means, among other things, that the peer review is a transparent process. Please inform authors and reviewers of this, and reveal their names to one another. The peer review should be a constructive, creative and ethical process. Make sure that both sides – the reviewers and the authors – feel duly respected.
   6. Encourage your authors to engage with non-textual forms of publishing, such as video, audio, paintings, drawings, cartoons and more.
   7. Pay attention to the gender balance among reviewers and authors. Please also be sure to include authors and reviewers from outside of European and North American academia. This does not always work out, for example due to differences in review culture. And it is sometimes not possible for other reasons, such as when the political situation in China means that we are unable to collaborate with colleagues there. Still, we do our best to be inclusive. The Editorial Board will lend support if you need assistance with the developmental editing of articles by junior scholars and scholars from beyond European and North American academia. Please draw the attention of authors to the persistent citation imbalance – in terms of gender, academic affiliation and skin colour, among others – in academic publications. Make an effort to look broadly and cite a variety of authors.
   8. We pay attention to diversity – institutional, gender, etc. – in the editorial team. It would be great if you made sure that different institutional cultures meet in the editorial team and complement each other.  
   9. The guest editors of a collection review all the articles. The second reviewers can either be solicited from among the Roadsides Editorial Board or from the wider academic community. As we try to keep the publication process swift, reviewers are usually expected to return their review within three weeks. Please state this clearly in your email communication to them.
   10. The Editors-in-Chief (ECs), the Managing Editor (ME) and the Designer need at least six weeks to ‘seal’ the articles in terms of their content, design and format. In this last phase of the publication process, the ECs and the ME read all articles and check the texts and other material for consistency and coherence. At this stage no major content-related requests are to be expected but they may demand that, for example, the ‘take-home message’ is spelled out more clearly. They may also make the authors aware of certain resonances with other articles both in the forthcoming collection and in the previous ones. Such resonances should be reflected upon in the articles. Roadsides is an ever-growing conversation, hence engagement with other Roadsides authors and themes is strongly encouraged. In those last six weeks before publication, the Roadsides editorial team take the reins and work directly with authors to polish the articles and make them shine.
   11. The usual number of contributions per edited collection is eight (including the Introduction). We do not have the funding to publish more, as the costs of copyediting and designing each article are substantial. If you would like to commission further articles (up to a maximum of two), you are expected to apply for additional funding at your department/university. 250–300 CHF is the average cost per article. We use this money to pay the Designer and the Copy-editor for their work.
   12. The editors of a given collection are in charge of writing its Introduction (1500 words max.). You might go for a brief Introduction (see Galen Murton’s Introduction to Collection 002 https://roadsides.net/murton-002) or a lengthier approach (see Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi’s for Collection 001 https://roadsides.net/joniak-001).
   13. Proofreading and copy-editing of articles is usually done by the fantastic David Hawkins (ecoteric@googlemail.com). Please contact David well in advance to inform him about the expected publication schedule. Always Cc the Roadsides editorial team into your correspondence.
   14. Please contact Roadsides editor Max Woodworth (max.woodworth@gmail.com) in charge of managing our social media about promotion strategy. Where else, in addition to our social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), the Roadsides newsletter and the mailing lists through which we usually inform of new publications (e.g. anthropology-matters), would you like to advertise the publication of your collection? We have very high download numbers: between 2000 and 3500 full-collection downloads within one year following publication, in addition to downloads of individual articles. Our experience shows that social media play an important role in expanding our readership.
   15. Please remind your authors that Roadsides is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. This means that all the images, as well as audio and video files are published under this license (CC-BY 4.0) too. To make sure that the multi-media contents are cited properly when used by other parties, the authorship must be clearly identified in the captions.