GUIDELINES FOR FORUM GUEST EDITORS

Effective September, 2009

How to Submit a Forum Topic Proposal

Email a 1-2 page forum topic proposal to the attention of Managing Editor Megan Conway at 
rdsj@hawaii.edu. Forum topic proposals should include: 

1. Complete contact information (name, email, snail mail, phone) of ALL guest editors. 
Collaborative efforts between 2 or more guest editors is encouraged.
2. Topics to be explored (please be specific and include a list of specific topics/questions you 
will ask authors to address in your call for papers).
3. Previous editorial experience of the guest editors.
4. Plan for soliciting, reviewing and editing manuscripts from an international authorship. 
5. Whether or not you plan to offer authors anonymous peer review (see guidelines below for 
more information on what this entails). 
6. Potential audience for special issue beyond our regular subscription base.
7. Do not distribute a Call for Papers until your topic has been approved by the RDS 
editors.

Guest Editor Responsibilities Upon Approval of Topic

Note that deadlines will vary with each forum, but it is the guest editor's responsibility to 
meet the deadlines as agreed upon with the editors.

1.  Call for papers - Develop call for papers and seek approval from the RDS Managing Editor. 
The CFP should include information about whether or not anonymous peer review will be 
made available, and should state that acceptance of an abstract or initial acceptance of an 
article does not guarantee publication in RDS. Please refer authors to our website, 
www.rds.hawaii.edu, for more information about our journal and for formatting guidelines. We 
will send the CFP out to our RDS fellows, reviewers and subscribers. We will also post it on 
our website. You need to send it out to various listservs and other interested individuals, 
bearing in mind that you need to ensure contributions from as diverse and international 
an authorship as possible. 
2. Review the abstracts or articles and select the ones you would like to include. Run the list of 
abstracts or articles by the RDS Managing Editor. Once approved by us, you can go ahead 
and notify authors of your decision and work with the selected authors to write and/or edit their 
manuscripts.  Note the total allowable length of forums is 25,000 words (including 
references) and be clear with authors about word restrictions on their articles. Forums 
should be composed of at least 3 articles plus an introduction by the guest editors.
3. A note to encourage all authors to subscribe to the journal!
4. Submit compiled forum of articles to the Managing Editor. Forums should not exceed 
25,000 words in length, and should be well-edited by the guest editors. Please include a 
submission form for each article (download from our website). Thorough editing for content, 
grammar, and syntax should be done by the guest editors and the authors before submitting 
the forum for consideration by the RDS editors. Authors and guest editors MUST FOLLOW 
THE RDS PUBLICATION GUIDELINES POSTED ON OUR WEBSITE. Please include an 
introduction by the guest editor(s).  Indicate which, if any, articles need to be anonymously 
peer-reviewed.
5. If anonymous peer review is desired, the RDS Managing Editor will send out those articles 
to members of our Review Board. NOTE THAT ANONYMOUS PEER REVIEW COULD ADD 
UP TO 3 MONTHS TO THE EDITING PROCESS.
6. RDS editors will review the forum and return to you with anonymous peer review forms, if 
applicable, and any other edits that are requested by the editors. You will correspond directly 
with authors about any revisions needed at their end. Submit revised forum to the Managing 
Editor.
7. Note that the RDS Managing Editor reserves the right to deny publication of any article or an 
entire forum at any time if RDS standards of publication are not met.
8. We will format, print, bind and mail out the issue. We will also post it online.
9. We will send out the issue to our subscribers and to the authors, and will advertise the issue 
via our listservs and networks. You are responsible for advertising the issue via your listservs 
and networks.