Commissioning

Benefits of commissioning content and how to get started

Commissioning is the solicitation of content, where Editors and Editorial Board Members approach established and up-and-coming researchers within their field to contribute to a journal. The purpose of commissioning is to improve the quality and diversity of content published with the journal, whilst providing readers with cutting edge information within the field.

On this page we discuss how commissioning can benefit your journal, how to start commissioning, and how open access agreements could be beneficial to your journal (as well as authors).

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How commissioning can benefit your journal

Increase usage and citations

Ensure good coverage of your field

Encourage diversity of content

Additional benefits:

  • Commissioned Reviews and Editorials can encourage conversation and debate

  • Commissioned articles increase the journal’s views and citations

  • Solicitation of content that is emerging or less well-covered increases field coverage

  • Support growth and development for indexing applications

  • Increase the reach and recognition of the journal to the authors from new research communities

  • Solidify the journal’s position as a primary source of information for new and established researchers

Commissioning methods

Identify experts and up-and-coming researchers to contribute to the journal

Encourage Editors and Editorial Board members to submit their research to the journal

Identify key topics within the field and invite authors to contribute research on these topics

How to start

Before commissioning content for a journal, we recommend that Editors reach out to the journal’s Portfolio Manager or Commissioning Editor to discuss their approach. Here are a few points to consider before reaching out to the T&F Editorial team and while managing commissioned content:

  1. The journal will only be able to consider proposals that fall within its Aims & Scope.

  2. Taylor & Francis offers a few formats to present commissioned content:

    Special Issues: Articles are published within a dedicated issue. The research published can be by invitation or by open call for submissions.

    Article Collections: Articles are published in a regular issue and assigned to the article collection immediately upon acceptance. The research published can be by invitation or by open call for submissions. Article collections offer an opportunity for cross-journal collections.

    Individually Commissioned Articles: Articles appear within the regular issue/volume run of the journal and are not assigned to a specific special issue or article collection.

  3. All manuscripts, regardless of whether they are commissioned or submitted to Article Collections / Special Issues, go through peer review following COPE guidelines and are expected to meet the journal’s ethical publishing and peer review policies.

  4. Special Issues and Article Collections may require a Guest Editor or Advisor who is usually a recognized specialist in the field.

  5. Consider how you wish to develop the journal (i.e. content, diversity, quality, impact).

  6. Consider the current research landscape and the appetite for your proposed content:

    What value does your proposed content bring to the journal’s readership?
    Is there a gap in the literature that needs to be filled?
    Is there an emerging topic that needs coverage?
    Is there sufficient research activity to warrant a full special issue or article collection, or is the topic better suited to a standalone article or short series of 2-3 articles?

Next steps

Once you have considered the above points, you should follow the steps below.

  • Please discuss your ideas with your journal’s Portfolio Manager or Commissioning Editor.

  • Work in collaboration with your contacts to develop and implement an appropriate commissioning strategy for your journal.

  • Watch your journal grow from strength to strength!

Examples

Here are some examples of popular Special Issues and Article Collections published within our journals:

Open access agreements

We’re partners with global institutions and funders to support researchers to publish gold open access in their chosen journals. If your journal offers gold open access publication, these agreements may mean that eligible authors can publish open access in your journal at no cost to themselves or with a discounted article publishing charge (APC). This could be beneficial to both the author and your journal.

Agreements may not apply to every journal and the specific arrangements will vary. When communicating with potential authors, you may want to be aware of agreements that could be beneficial to them, although individual authors will need to review their eligibility and how to access the funds themselves.

Below we have labelled the transformative agreements by whether they apply to an array of Open Select journals, fully Open Access journals, or both. You can confirm if your journal is Open Select or fully Open Access using the OA Cost Finder, looking under “OA Status”.

Please see the details of the agreements via the links to confirm if your journal is included in each agreement specifically. Inclusion of your journal does not guarantee funds for all eligible authors publishing open access in your journal.

If authors have questions, you should refer them to the open access agreements information to review the agreements directly.

New agreements are being made all the time, so do check back here in future.

R&P Agreement with Consortia/Member Name Country Does this Apply to Open Select Journals? Does this Apply to Full Open Access Journals?
Bibliosan Italy Yes No
B-On - Biblioteca do Conhecimento Online Portugal Yes No
BIBSAM Sweden Yes Yes
BNL Luxembourg Yes Yes
CAUL Australia and New Zealand Yes Yes - certain consortia members: Victoria University and Western Sydney University, see full agreement for more details
Central European University Hungary Yes No
Consortia SAS Colombia Yes Yes
COSEC Slovenia Yes No
CSIC Spain Yes Yes
Cyprus Academic Library Consortium Cyprus Yes No
CzechELib Czech Republic Yes No
EISZ Hungary Yes Yes
FinELib Finland Yes No
Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong Yes No
Inter-University Center for Digital Information Services Israel Yes No
Illinois State University USA Yes No
IReL Ireland Yes Yes
Jisc UK Yes Yes - certain consortia members, see full agreement for more details
Leibniz Association Germany Yes Yes
Max Planck Digital Library Germany Yes Yes
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) USA Yes Yes
Montana State University (MSU) USA Yes Yes
Portland State University Library USA Yes No
Qatar National Library Qatar Yes Yes
Ritsumeikan University Japan Yes No
Sikt Norway Yes Yes - certain consortia members, see full agreement for more details
Consortium of Swiss Academic Libraries Switzerland Yes Yes
The Ohio State University USA Yes Yes
The University of Kansas USA No Yes
Tokyo Kogyo Daigaku Japan Yes No
Universidad Pública de Navarra Spain Yes No
Victoria University Australia Yes Yes
Western Sydney University Australia No Yes
VSNU Netherlands Yes Yes

    Additional information