Call for Papers: Special Issue on "Sustainability Transitions and Policy Challenges”

Journal of Systems Science and Information announces a special issue focused on the theme of “Sustainability Transitions and Policy Challenges.” This is an open, global call for papers.

Societies worldwide are experiencing rapid, overlapping changes—decarbonization, climate adaptation, digitalization, and population ageing in parallel with shifting industrial, commercial, and governance structures. These transitions are dynamic and contested: they involve feedback, delays, lock-in, rebound effects, and unintended consequences that frequently undermine well-intended policies. System Dynamics (SD) is particularly well-suited for understanding and guiding rapid transitions because it explains endogenous change through feedback structure and behavioral responses, reveals policy resistance and long-run side effects, and supports policy design under uncertainty as a learning process. China and other Asian countries offer a rich set of transition experiences—large-scale urbanization, infrastructure expansion, industrial upgrading, and accelerating sustainability policy experimentation. Countries in Africa have seen some of the most dramatic impacts of climate and population on stability and territorial integrity. At the same time, the global north is dealing with decarbonization, aging, and institutional inertia. Despite many shared sustainability goals, lessons often remain siloed by region, discipline, or sector. This special issue is designed to connect insights across contexts, enable comparison of transition mechanisms across emerging and mature economies, transfer policy learning across regions and sectors, and increase the use of SD scholarship in the sustainability transition debate.

While we explicitly encourage contributions inspired by emerging-economy transitions, submissions from all regions are welcome.

Topics of Interest
We hope to attract a mix of conceptual, methodological, and empirical SD papers on sustainability transitions in a variety of domains including energy, industry, cities, water, food, health, mobility, education, and digital governance. Contributions should be SD-centered and make clear what has been, or can be, learned about transition dynamics and policy. ? Transition dynamics and mechanisms. For example, feedback structures driving rapid change, lock-in and path dependence, tipping behavior, and interactions between shocks and long-run transition pathways.
Sustainability trade-offs and “who bears the costs”. For example, efficiency–equity–resilience trade-offs over time, distributional outcomes across groups and regions, and legitimacy and trust during transition.
Policy design. For example, adaptive policies with feedback mechanisms for adjustment and enforcement, policy portfolios (pricing, regulation, standards, subsidies, investment, information), and institutional change to create beneficial feedback control.
Cross-context learning and comparative transition studies. For example, explicit comparisons across emerging vs. mature economies, identification of transferable SD mechanisms, and syntheses of how context shapes leverage points and policy resistance.
Strengthening SD practice for transition research. For example, boundary selection and validation logic in fast-changing systems, uncertainty and robustness analysis, and integration with complementary approaches to strengthen SD insight.
Case studies. For example, cases that document modeling dilemmas, stakeholder tensions, implementation constraints, policy negotiation, and what changed and was learned. Submission Guidelines and Timeline
We are looking for papers that not only address the sustainability transition theme, but also make a clear contribution to system dynamics modeling and insight generation. Interdisciplinary perspectives are encouraged; however, studies should remain SD-centered rather than presenting general sustainability narratives without SD modeling.
Full Paper Submission: Authors are invited to submit full manuscripts through the journal’s online submission system (https://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/syssi).
Special Issue Identification: During submission, authors should select the special issue article type and clearly indicate that the manuscript is intended for the Special Issue on “Sustainability Transitions and Policy Challenges” (for example, in the cover letter and any special-issue field provided by the submission system).
Announcement: June 5, 2026
Deadline for Full Papers Submissions: November 5, 2026; full papers will be peer-reviewed according to the journal’s regular review process for special issue manuscripts.
Revised Results: Results of reviews will be communicated to authors no later than March 15, 2027.
Deadline for Revised Papers: May 15, 2027
Papers will be published as they complete the production process and collated into a special issue within 2027.

Guest Editors
Prof. Dr. Guijun Li, Hebei Normal University, China
Prof. Dr. Xiaojing Jia, Central University of Finance and Economics, China
Prof. Dr. Ying Qian, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, China
Prof. Dr. Jaziar Radianti, University of Agder, Norway
Prof. Dr. Jenson Goh, Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore
All guest editors are available to answer questions and advise on the special issue, and can be contacted through sysengi@amss.ac.cn
This special issue aims to advance SD scholarship on sustainability transitions by connecting learning across contexts of rapid change. By bringing together research from emerging and mature economies—we seek to clarify transition mechanisms, improve policy design under trade-offs, and strengthen the practical credibility of SD for sustainability governance worldwide.