NEWS & NOTES

Editorial Workflow

by Cheryl May | Mar 2026 | Call for Contributions, For Contributors, SDA blog

RSD symposium proceedings are published every year and catalogued by formats and topics to create the RSD searchable repository of systemic design resources. The annual RSD symposium introduces current work in systemic design and offers a platform for sharing and discussing work with an international community of design colleagues.

RSD15 Papers ONLINE

Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design are published online and include the contributions for each format. The publisher is the Systemic Design Association, and RSD is registered as ISSN 2371-8404 and as open-access documents.

RSD is an opportunity for authors working in systemic design to publish work. Many papers are indexed on Google Scholar, and scholarly indexing is supported through SDA’s partnership with OCADU’s Open Research Repository.

The RSD15 call for contributions is hosted by the Politecnico di Torino Sys_Lab group. Email questions to rsd15@polito.it.

Please note the following dates:

April 24 intent to submit (no abstract is needed at this stage)
May 8 workshop and exhibition/map briefs due
May 22 full papers (long and short) and PhD Colloquium papers due
October 8&9, online paper talks
October 13–16 RSD15-Turin symposium

Peer reviews

Papers and presentations are managed by the academic/programme committee. RSD uses a single-anonymous peer-review process, meaning reviewers see the authors’ names, but the authors do not see reviewers’ names. Reviewers consider the quality of the proposed contribution, its relevance to the theme, sub-themes, and focus areas, and whether it addresses topics of interest or raises relevant issues in systemic design.

Programme committee members review and assess workshops, interactives, systems maps, and exhibits. There is no peer-review process.

Notifications:

ready for publication
revisions (minor, moderate, major)
not recommended

The RSD hosts and organisers usually schedule paper talks and presentations in groups of three to five and develop them in line with the RSD theme, sub-themes, or emergent focus areas.

Author expectations and responsibilities

RSD proceedings function as a respository for extant literature in systemic design. Contributions include empirical research, theoretical research, literature reviews, meta-analyses, conceptual papers, methodological papers and essays. Articles are published as formal proceedings (e.g., see RSD11).

Authors are expected to register for the event and encouraged to participate in sessions beyond their own to gather new insights into their work and find encouragement and colleagues. There is a great deal of emphasis on sharing work and receiving input from peers.

Paper talks are generally organised to allow 20–30 minutes per presentation, and the default format is a 10–15 minute presentation with the remaining time for questions. Authors and moderators can decide the best way to present within their paper grouping. For example, sometimes, it makes sense to pair presentations and discuss them as a dyad; sometimes, there is a series of presentations and a discussion period about the topics and their relationship.

The use of a slide deck is optional, although most authors choose to present something visual. This can also be an infographic, map, or short video clip to accompany their comments. These assets can be included in the proceedings article at the author’s discretion.

RSD Production Process

RSDsymposium.org operates within the creative constraint of an entirely community-funded model, a high degree of responsiveness to authors and RSD programme committees, and overarching dedication to creating a collaborative, author-centric process. This is most succinctly expressed by the Scholars Spiral, the Systemic Design Association’s cyclic, non-hierarchical approach to advancing scholarship, adopted to:

Reduce the competitive implications of the hierarchical structure of the ladder, with the achievement of the peer-reviewed article at the top of the ladder
Encourage the development of new authors in the field by promoting a realistic yet high-standard process for authors at different levels of quality and readiness to start publishing
Adapting our knowledge of systems thinking to the publishing process

RSD proceedings, represented by RSDsymposium.org as a searchable systemic design repository, jumped from 115 for RSD10 to 227 for RSD11, a productivity gain that is the direct result of collaboration and has wide-ranging benefits. While RSD’s capacity for proceedings has grown through the involvement of RSD chairs and programme committee members and constant process improvements by RSD editors, authors play a significant part by referring to the RSD Guidelines in the preparation of their manuscript and their active engagement in the collaborative editing process. These aspects of the RSD production process are what makes managing the volume of RSD articles by a single production editor possible.

Over the last few years, RSD has attempted to develop a an RSD production process that supports the community of scholars and practitioners in the field of systemic design. For example, the RSD production process has maintained adherence to using applications that are the most common in each sphere of the work involved: EasyChair for submissions, WordPress for the RSD repository, and Google Docs for editing. This means that authors can submit work in the environment most likely familiar to them and editing can take place without constant uploads or the perils of email exchanges. Search engine optimisation for web indexing and Google Scholar has also been addressed so that authors can expect their articles to show up in a general or Scholar web search.

Significant initiatives such as the launch of the repository with RSD9, the introduction of the interactive session format at RSD10, and clearer guidelines for authors and editors at RSD11 have contributed to increasing accessibility to systemic design work. In 2022, SDA also shifted the organisational model to the Spiral, identifiying points for collective contribution and cocreation such as peer feedback, publication, and communications, evident in the invitation to all submitting authors to peer-review a paper for RSD12.

RSD15 Workflow

RSD14 calendar indicates that the review period is complete and the next step is posting working papers.

In-press papers will be available via the public folder. Questions? please contact Cheryl May, RSD Editor, cheryl@systemic-design.org.

RSD15 Deadlines

Advance online access by August 31, 2026
Papers in circulation for RSD15: September 30, 2026
Symposium period: October 8 to 21, 2026
Editorial period and revisions: post-RSD15 to August 31, 2027
Publication launched at RSD16

RSD Editor: Cheryl May cheryl@systemic-design.org

RSD STYLE GUIDE

RSD14 Production Schedule

IN PRESS: Changes are in progress based on reviewer comments, input from RSD attendees and others, and author reviews.

The RSD editorial period employs a collaborative editing approach. The production editor makes direct, non-substantive changes to the paper in line with the RSD style guide without consultation with the authors. However, authors are contacted if there are concerns about specific segments of their work or if considerable changes are needed to align the paper with the Guidelines. Authors can review changes at any time by:

Requesting editorial access to their manuscript
Viewing changes by going to file>version history

Once editorial access is granted, the author can directly edit their work up to March 31, 2024. At this time, the entire manuscript is considered to be camera-ready, and the abstract and author list directly conform with the HTML version on RSDsymposium.org.

During the collaborative editing period, authors are invited to contact the production editor to discuss changes to their manuscript or the post on RSDsymposium.org.

RSD articles are optimised for indexing on Google, including Google Scholar; however, RSD doesn’t have the capacity to develop the keyword/keyphrase for every paper. Authors who want to improve the search results for their paper, may also propose an SEO keyword or keyphrase via a comment on the Google Doc version of their paper.

During this period, authors may share draft papers as “in press” (peer-reviewed and accepted but in the editorial and production stages for proceedings).

VERSION OF RECORD: All papers are finalised and camera-ready for PDF and embedding with RSD posts.

During this time, papers are exported as PDFs from Google Drive and embedded with the post, constituting the full and final article for the proceedings. Author commitments are completed at this point, and the collaborative editing period closes.

It is best practice for authors to review the final presentation of their work in the proceedings, including checking links in the HTML or PDF version of their document. Authors are encouraged to contact the RSD editor to note corrections or request changes. Authors with multiple entries in RSD proceedings might want to review the search result for their name (use “first last” for best results). The RSD proceedings have developed over many years, and the presentation of the authors’ RSD back catalogue can likely be improved, for example, author name(s) in the excerpt, shortened links, embedding papers, and links to related work).

ADVANCE ONLINE PUBLICATION: The papers are publicly available, and the collaborative editing period is initiated.

The author’s pre-production Word version of their accepted manuscript constitutes the production version and is considered to be an advance online publication. Documents are exported to the RSD14 Google Drive folder, and the link to the folder is included with the related Paper Talk. Anyone with the link can read this version. PDF versions generated by authors are no longer used in the RSD production process.

Authors must review the production version to ensure the correct document is uploaded. From this point forward, RSD will not accept new Word versions. However, we are entering the collaborative editing process, and authors should request editorial access to access and make direct revisions to their manuscripts.

REVISED MANUSCRIPTS: Abstracts and author list are directly imported from EasyChair to WordPress; therefore, they must align with the paper.

During this period, authors return to EasyChair to:

finalise abstracts and keywords
ensure the authors are placed in the correct order
upload the pre-production Word version of their paper

As of the deadline, the author list and abstract portion of the manuscript, up to and including the keywords, comprise the post on RSDsymposium.org, i.e., they are considered camera-ready. Unlike the paper, this portion is set in HTML, so later changes to the abstract will not be reflected in the post unless reset. RSD does not have the capacity to proofread every post for alignment, so keeping the author list and abstract in the post exactly the same as the abstract in the paper is the responsibility of the authors, and the RSD editorial will make changes on request.

This period also allows authors to revise their submissions based on reviewer feedback. For most accepted papers, revisions from the abstract and author list can be done in the months following RSD. In some cases, reviewers or editors have noted critical revisions to correct errors, and the author is requested to make these before the pre-production deadline.

Updated July 2026

The information reflects RSD14/RSD15 and may be different from previous RSD symposia. The Call for Contributions can vary based on the decisions made by the host and organisers.