On the editorial process

Abstract

In the Editorial for the previous issue of Journal of Global Ethics, we selected to discuss COVID19, a global issue affecting very nearly all of us in unprecedented ways. The disease continues as a first priority health concern around the globe. Now that we have just entered the hopedfor era of vaccination, previously anticipated concerns for global justice regarding equitable distribution of the vaccine are now added. We cannot continue with expansion of the COVID-19 story in this issue’s editorial, since COVID-19 has meant delays in production and publication of this final issue for 2020, and uncertainty has also led us to an unexpected longer than usual page count. Consequently, the issue opens with what must be a brief editorial, and we have chosen to focus on the circumstances of the journal’s production. Some readers are very familiar with various aspects of editors’ approaches for compiling any given journal issue. But Journal of Global Ethics has as its ideal to be read around the globe, and to receive contributions from early-career professionals who may be less familiar with the mechanics of academic journals as well as non-academic practitioners concerned with diverse issues from around the globe. We can expect that some will be unfamiliar with standard practices, and nearly all will be unfamiliar with any given journal’s specific practices. For this editorial, we will use a bit of space to explain this journal’s practices further. We do so particularly for the purpose of transparency, and for encouraging contributions from those who may be less familiar with placement of material in this journal and in other such publications. We do this for the sake of the diverse readership we aspire to and to promote the aims of the journal itself: for global discourse is itself a part of global ethics. More than half of the material in Journal of Global Ethics includes full topical special issues, issues of selected papers from International Development Ethics Association conferences, guest-edited sections, and further invited content that is selected by ourselves, the journal editors. We think that guest-edited sections and full special issues, in particular, allow more diverse voices to enter discussion of global ethics. We encourage proposals for issues focused on less-discussed global, regional and disciplinary themes and promote open callsfor-papers. Further details concerning the process of making a proposal lie further below. Journal of Global Ethics is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal, and refereed submissions to the journal generally fill a third to a half of its pages in any given year. We consider the process for publishing reviewed articles to be the journal’s main work and to take general priority with respect to timelines to publication also. The refereeing process for standard submissions received at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/rjge is transparent as a matter of course. Such transparency is the very infrastructure of academe, providing a basis for hiring, tenure and promotion decisions. The infrastructure itself is also partly supported by journals that subscribe to standard sets of practices, such as those developed by the Committee on Publishing Ethics, http://publicationethics.org, an organization to which our editorial practices cohere. Journals such as this one usually require editors to determine whether material is both suited to the