[The following is excerpted from the webpage of the ISTR: International Society for Third- Sector Research. For the full announcement, see here: CFP: Voluntas Special Issue – Advancing Nonprofit and Civil Society Research through Replication – www.istr.org]
We call for papers dedicated to replicating studies within the field of nonprofit and civil society research. This field addresses vital issues and generates findings meant to inform the practical actions and policies impacting nonprofit organizations. Topics of interest include governance and management of nonprofit organizations, charitable donations (whether money, time, goods, or biological materials), volunteering, fundraising strategies, social movements, advocacy, and community-based organizing…
Despite the numerous benefits of replication, however, the culture of publishing replication studies in the field of nonprofit and civil society studies is still in its infancy. Leading journals in the field have published only a small – though growing number – of studies that focus on or include a strong element of replication…
This special issue calls for replications of studies within the nonprofit and civil society research community, to correct inadvertent errors in previous research (e.g., due to programming errors), to safeguard against questionable research practices (e.g., p-hacking), and to test the robustness of results against sensible methodological variations.
We therefore seek contributions that replicate studies about civil society issues. We invite a wide range of such replications:
– Articles of up to 8000 words (including shorter research note-style articles that may be below this word limit),
– replicating one original study, or a bundle of related original studies,
– dealing with individuals, organizations, or other units of analysis, and using naturally or experimentally generated data.
We particularly welcome submissions that
– engage with theories that have been highly influential in the research field, or that focus on issue of wide practical relevance to civil society and nonprofit organizations,
– are the first to replicate an important previous study,
– feature author independence between replication and original research,
– engage in exact replication (i.e., repeating every element of the original design) as well as constructive replication (i.e., purposefully improving at least one element of the original design, such as measures, data types, or inference methods…).
– move from quantitative designs with lower to those with higher statistical power,
– examine how findings from widely studied contexts can be generalized to understudied contexts, such as marginalized groups or the Global South,
– have preregistered their research designs at least prior to the beginning of data analysis, in line with best practices of Open Science,
– make their data and other research materials publicly available upon submission.
TIMELINE
The review process for this special issue will consist of two phases: an open review presubmission phase, and an anonymous review after formal submission.
Pre-Submission Phase
To enter this phase, please submit your full manuscript via email to the corresponding guest editor, Florentine Maier (Florentine.maier@wu.ac.at), for an initial screening and open peer review. Two guest editors will be assigned to your manuscript, who will provide feedback and may request revisions as a prerequisite for advancing to the next phase.
Manuscripts are welcome from now until the deadline of January 1, 2026.
Submissions will be reviewed and processed as quickly as possible to facilitate timely progression to the next stage.
Anonymous Peer Review
Once your manuscript has been cleared in the presubmission phase, please submit it through the regular VOLUNTAS submission system, marking it as a submission for the special issue. Manuscripts that advance to this stage will have met a high standard of quality and relevance, reducing the likelihood of desk rejections. The VOLUNTAS editors-in-chief will desk review each submission and assign additional reviewers for a formal anonymous peer review, after which the final editorial decision will be made.
Accepted manuscripts will be published online first, and the complete special issue will be available by July 1, 2027, at the latest.
Guest editors
René Bekkers (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Florentine Maier (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business)
Richard Steinberg (Indiana University Indianapolis)
The Replication Network 