Special Issues and Calls for Papers

European Gynecology and Obstetrics (EGO) publishes special collections: thematic groupings of articles devoted to a defined question within the Journal's scope and curated by Guest Editors appointed by the Editor-in-Chief. A special collection may take the form of a special issue, a theme issue, a supplement associated with a scientific congress, or a topical collection published across successive issues and updated over time.

Special collections serve a purpose that regular issues cannot. They give sustained, high-visibility treatment to questions of particular scientific relevance or clinical urgency for the gynecology and obstetrics community, and they assemble in a single citable body of work evidence that would otherwise remain dispersed across issues, journals and disciplines.

This section brings together the Journal's open Calls for Papers, the collections currently in preparation, and those already published. Every collection has its own landing page that sets out its scope, the names, affiliations, and ORCID identifiers of its Guest Editors, the submission deadline, any source of financial support, and the complete list of published articles with DOI links.

Open Calls for Papers

No Call for Papers is currently open. New calls are announced on this page and through the Journal's News and Announcements section. Researchers who wish to propose a topic for a future collection are invited to read the section below.

Propose a Special Issue

The Journal welcomes proposals from researchers who wish to act as Guest Editors of a special collection. Proposals may be submitted at any time and are considered on their scientific merit, their relevance to the Journal's scope, and the standing and independence of the proposed Guest Editor team.

Guest Editorship of a collection published by European Gynecology and Obstetrics is a substantive editorial responsibility, not an honorary title. Guest Editors coordinate the Call for Papers, identify authors and reviewers, manage the peer review of the manuscripts assigned to them, and remain accountable for the collection after publication. They act in an advisory capacity: all final editorial decisions rest exclusively with the Editor-in-Chief.

What a proposal must contain

A formal proposal is submitted in writing to the Editorial Office and must include:

• the proposed title of the special collection;
• a scientific rationale and a statement of relevance to the Journal's scope, not exceeding 500 words;
• the proposed format (special issue, supplement, topical collection);
• for each proposed Guest Editor: full name, institutional affiliation, institutional email address, ORCID identifier and a curriculum vitae of no more than two pages;
• a preliminary list of proposed topics or, where available, of identified authors and provisional article titles;
• the proposed submission deadline and target publication date;
• a declaration of any financial support, sponsorship or commercial involvement associated with the collection;
• a declaration of any conflict of interest between the proposed Guest Editors and the anticipated authorship, including shared institutional affiliations, collaborative relationships and financial ties;
• confirmation that each proposed Guest Editor accepts the responsibilities and conduct standards set out in the Journal's Special Issues and Guest Editors Policy.

Who can serve as Guest Editor

To be eligible for appointment, a researcher must hold a doctoral degree or equivalent qualification in a field relevant to the proposed topic, have a demonstrable record of peer-reviewed publication in gynaecology, obstetrics or a related clinical or biomedical discipline, hold a current and verifiable institutional affiliation, and possess an active ORCID identifier. Proposed Guest Editors must have no record of retractions attributable to misconduct in the preceding five years and must not be under investigation for research or publication misconduct.

Guest Editor teams must include researchers affiliated with at least two different institutions. Teams composed exclusively of researchers from a single institution or a single country will not normally be approved. Geographic and institutional diversity is strongly encouraged, both as a safeguard against conflicts of interest and as a means of extending the scientific reach of the collection.

How proposals are handled

The Editorial Office acknowledges receipt of a proposal within 10 working days and submits it to the Editor-in-Chief. The Editor-in-Chief may approve the proposal as submitted, approve it subject to modifications, request further information, or decline it. The decision is communicated to the proposer within 30 working days of receipt of a complete proposal.

Every proposed Guest Editor is subject to a mandatory vetting procedure before appointment, covering verification of identity and affiliation, consistency of the ORCID record with the declared publication history, a cross-check against the Retraction Watch Database, and review of the declared conflicts of interest.

Once a proposal is approved, each Guest Editor signs a Guest Editor Agreement with the Editorial Office. No editorial activity relating to the collection may begin before that Agreement is signed. The Editorial Office then publishes the Call for Papers on this page and through the appropriate scientific channels.

The standards that apply

Publication in a special collection of European Gynecology and Obstetrics carries exactly the same guarantees, and exactly the same requirements, as publication in a regular issue.

• Identical peer review. All manuscripts submitted to a special collection undergo the same double-anonymized peer review as regular submissions. No manuscript is accepted without external review by at least two independent experts. Publication in a special collection does not imply a relaxation of the Journal's quality threshold.
• No charges to authors. Consistent with the Journal's diamond open access model, no Article Processing Charge is levied on authors publishing in special collections. The Journal does not use fee waivers as an incentive to submit.
• Immediate open access. All articles are published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), with authors retaining copyright.
• Editorial independence. No sponsor or funder of a collection may determine which articles are accepted, select or exclude reviewers, or approve content before publication. Any source of financial support is disclosed in the Call for Papers and in all published content.
• Full transparency. Every article is labelled as belonging to its collection on the article page, in the PDF and full-text versions, and in the metadata deposited with Crossref and the indexing and abstracting services used by the Journal.
• Integrity safeguards. Special collections are monitored throughout their life cycle through documented audit checkpoints and continuous surveillance of submission and reviewer patterns, in line with COPE and STM guidance on the systematic manipulation of the publication process.
• Defined limits on Guest Editor authorship. A Guest Editor may submit no more than two manuscripts to the collection they manage, must recuse themselves entirely from the handling of their own submissions, and the combined authorship of the Editor-in-Chief, Editorial Board members and Guest Editors may not exceed 25% of the articles published in the collection.

A dedicated policy

The proposal, approval, management and publication of special collections, together with the eligibility, responsibilities and conduct standards applicable to Guest Editors, are governed by a dedicated document: the Special Issues and Guest Editors Policy. The Policy is aligned with the COPE Guideline on Guest Edited Collections (2025), the ICMJE Recommendations (Section III.F, Supplements, Theme Issues and Special Series), and the DOAJ special issues criteria.

Prospective Guest Editors and authors are asked to read the Policy in full before submitting a proposal or a manuscript. Compliance with it is a condition both of appointment as Guest Editor and of submission to a special collection.

> Read the Special Issues Policy

Contact

Proposals and enquiries should be addressed to the Editorial Office at info@egojournal.eu, with the subject line "Special Issue proposal".