In the framework of 16+1 China-CEEC Think Tanks Network Cooperation, Department of International Relations and Tallinn Law School (Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia) and Institute for Development and International Relations (Croatia) are issuing a joint Call for academic papers on the Belt and Road Initiative, its impact on international relations, and Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe’s involvement into the process of the Initiative’s implementation. The papers are to be submitted for Baltic Journal of European Studies or BJES [http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/bjes] (published by Tallinn University of Technology) and Croatian International Relations Review or CIRR [http://cirr.irmo.hr/] (published by Institute for Development and International Relations). Both editions are peer-reviewed, while comfortably ‘residing’ on the publishing platform of De Gruyter and widely read throughout their respective regions of origin – the area of the Baltic and Nordic Europe and South-Eastern Europe.

The intention of this Call is to provide space for academic discussion on the China-originated Belt and Road Initiative. Therefore, employing rigorous methodology, the authors are welcomed to submit their papers with original research in fields of political science, political economy, legal studies, philosophy and social anthropology on the topics related to the Belt and Road Initiative, its perceptions, mechanisms of implementation and results measurements, perspectives for and formats of business-related, academic and people-to-people cooperational linkages to be developed in the process of the Initiative’s implementation, their impact on the EU’s interactions with China, and the Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe’s direct and indirect participation in the framework.

Please make submissions to either of the two Journals. The editorial boards of the two editions will, in cooperation and in mutual agreement, decide on the selection and distribution of papers between the two Journals. When submitting your manuscript under this Call, please indicate if you have a particular request for your article to published in one of the two Journals, should your manuscript is accepted. The accepted articles will be published in the Special guest-co-edited issues of BJES and CIRR in 2017. All guidelines for authors can be found on web-pages of the two Journals.

The time-frame is as follows:

9 September 2016 – Call for Papers is issued

9 December 2016 – all submissions received for peer-review

10 December 2016 – 28 February 2017 – peer-review is taking place

All March 2017 – the selected submissions are getting amended by authors in accordance to the peer-review-originated feedback

By 5 April 2017 – re-submission of the amended papers for publication

May 2017 – the two Journals are in print and available online for international academic readership

We are looking forward to receiving your contributions. For further questions, please contact editorial boards at  bjes@ttu.ee and cirr@irmo.hr .