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The Issue with Special Issues: when Guest Editors Publish in Support of Self

Published 12 Jan 2026 in cs.DL | (2601.07563v1)

Abstract: The recent exceptional growth in the number of special issues has led to the largest delegation of editorial power in the history of scientific publishing. Has this power been used responsibly? In this article we provide the first systematic analysis of a particular form of abuse of power by guest editors: endogeny, the practice of publishing articles in ones own special issue. While moderate levels of endogeny are common in special issues, excessive endogeny is a blatant case of scientific misconduct. We define special issues containing more than 33% endogeny as Published in Support of Self (PISS). We build a dataset of over 100,000 special issues published between 2015 and 2025 by five leading publishers. The large majority of guest editors engage in endogeny responsibly, if at all. Nonetheless, despite endogeny policies by publishers and indexers, PISS is comparable in magnitude to scientific fraud. All journals heavily relying on special issues host PISS, and more than 1,000 PISS special issues are published each year, hosting tens of thousands of endogenous articles. Extreme PISS abuses are rare, as the majority of PISS occurs at moderate levels of endogeny. Since the scientific literature is a common pool resource this is not good news, as it reflects a widespread normalisation of guest editor misconduct. Fortunately, PISS can be solved by setting easily enforceable commonsense policies. We provide the data and analyses needed for indexers and academic regulators to act.

Summary

  • The paper reveals that self-serving publication, or endogeny, occurs with a mean rate of 14.1% and is especially concentrated in leading OA publishers.
  • Methodology integrated automated data scraping, manual curation, and cross-referencing across 100,000 special issues to ensure robust detection of endogenous articles.
  • Implications include significant economic impacts and policy gaps, urging systematic enforcement and transparent metadata standards to combat editorial misconduct.

Systematic Analysis of Endogeny and Self-serving Publication within Special Issues

Background and Motivation

The proliferation of guest-edited special issues has dramatically expanded editorial power within scientific publishing, especially among open-access (OA) publishers. Crosetto et al. ("The Issue with Special Issues: when Guest Editors Publish in Support of Self" (2601.07563)) interrogate the integrity risks associated with this editorial delegation, focusing on "endogeny"—the practice where guest editors publish their own non-editorial articles within the very special issues they curate. The central concern is whether such practices, when excessive, represent a form of scientific misconduct and how their prevalence compares to other integrity breaches such as outright fraud.

Data Resources and Methodology

The authors construct a comprehensive dataset targeting over 100,000 special issues across five major publishers (MDPI, Frontiers, BioMed Central (BMC), Springer Nature Discover, and the Royal Society’s Phil Trans) spanning 2015–2025. They develop a precise operational definition: an article is "endogenous" if authored by a special issue’s guest editor (excluding editorials), and a special issue is labeled PISS ("Published in Support of Self") when endogenous articles comprise more than 33% of non-editorial content.

Data acquisition leveraged direct publisher requests, web scraping (using R's rvest and MDPIexploreR), manual curation (notably for BMC due to nonstandard web architecture), and author-data cross-referencing via Crossref. Statistical aggregation permitted robust quantification of endogeny at article, special issue, and journal level, with careful name-disambiguation processes to minimize false negatives in editor-author matching.

Key Empirical Findings

Analysis demonstrates that:

  • Endogeny is widespread but usually moderate: Across journals hosting PISS, mean endogeny is 14.1% (1 in 7 articles), and most special issues are PISS-free.
  • PISS is non-trivial in magnitude: On average, 1,100 PISS special issues are published annually, containing tens of thousands of endogenous articles; PISS special issues are concentrated in MDPI and Frontiers journals, with MDPI responsible for ~85% of endogenous articles and 87% of identified PISS special issues.
  • High-impact PISS is rare but moderate PISS is normalized: Extreme PISS (over 75% endogeny) is infrequent, but most journals employing special issues as growth engines demonstrate intermediate volumes of PISS.
  • A minority of journals contribute a majority of PISS: 30 worst-offending journals (predominantly MDPI) account for 27% of all PISS special issues. The top 100 journals account for 70%, indicating targeted interventions could significantly curtail misconduct.

A notable claim is that the annual volume of self-serving publication through PISS is comparable to estimates for scientific fraud, with a calculated economic drain of €33–87 million over 11 years (based on conservative APC estimates).

Policy Analysis and Implications

While publishers nominally prohibit guest editors from managing their own submissions, practical enforcement is inconsistent. DOAJ’s recent 25% threshold policy appears to have induced declines in endogeny at several publishers, evidencing that external regulation is effective. However, post-hoc metadata manipulation (removing the "special issue" flag for insufficiently populated issues) at MDPI, Frontiers, and Elsevier obfuscates tracking efforts, suggesting deliberate avoidance of scrutiny.

The authors argue that solutions are straightforward: systematic enforcement of explicit endogeny policies (e.g., thresholds of allowed endogenous articles), automated detection through metadata, and universal transparency requiring accurate indexation. They advocate for publisher and indexer collaboration to ensure permanent, versioned, open metadata—enabling both retrospective and proactive integrity audits.

Theoretical and Practical Ramifications

The findings underscore a collective action problem in special issue publishing: delegated trust leads to normalization of mild misconduct, echoing Ostrom’s framework for common pool resource mismanagement. The practice, motivated by publish-or-perish pressure and editorial narcissism, distorts incentives and misallocates scientific funding.

From a policy perspective, the research demonstrates that technical and organizational solutions to endogeny are low-barrier yet underutilized. Transparent data publication and algorithmic editor-author crosslinking can operationalize regulatory oversight. For academic publishing ecosystems, the normalization of moderate self-service risks undermining the legitimacy and prestige of special issues, reinforcing concerns about the sustainability and fairness of OA business models.

In a broader AI context, the paper offers methodological guidance for large-scale integrity analyses, automatic misconduct identification, and bibliometric pipeline design—relevant for developing automated systems for research quality assurance.

Speculation on Future Developments

Given the efficacy of external indexer-driven policy change, expanded use of algorithmic monitoring and open bibliometric data resources (e.g., OpenAlex, Crossref) may facilitate early detection of editorial misconduct, including endogeny. The tension between decentralized editorial delegation and centralized integrity oversight will remain salient as the volume of special issue publishing grows. Integration of AI-driven auditing tools could further automate enforcement and minimize reliance on manual sleuthing. There is potential for cross-disciplinary impact in research assessment, science of science studies, and meta-research analytics.

Conclusion

Crosetto et al. deliver a rigorous, data-centric exposé of endogeny within special issues, revealing its nontrivial prevalence and economic impact, especially among high-volume OA publishers. While most guest editors act responsibly, moderate abuse is endemic, imposing serious integrity and financial burdens on the scientific enterprise. Practical preventions are straightforward but require systematic, transparent enforcement. Sustained vigilance, automated detection, and open metadata standards are essential to safeguarding the credibility of scientific publishing in an era of massive editorial delegation.

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Explain it Like I'm 14

What this paper is about

Think of a school newspaper that sometimes makes a special edition on a hot topic, and a student is invited to be a “guest editor” to organize it. Now imagine that guest editor fills a lot of that special edition with their own articles and their friends’ articles. Is that fair?

This paper looks at a similar problem in real science journals. It studies “special issues” led by guest editors and asks: are some guest editors using their power to publish lots of their own work? The authors call extreme cases of this behavior “PISS,” short for “Published in Support of Self.” The name is cheeky on purpose to draw attention to the problem.

The big questions the paper asks

  • How common is it for guest editors to publish their own non-editorial papers in their own special issues? (This is called “endogeny.”)
  • When does that behavior become excessive?
  • How often do special issues cross that line into “PISS”?
  • Which journals and publishers are most involved?
  • Can this problem be fixed, and how?

How the researchers studied it (in plain language)

The authors collected a very large set of data about special issues from 2015 to 2025:

  • They looked at more than 100,000 special issues containing almost 1 million papers from five major publishers: MDPI, Frontiers, BMC, Springer Nature’s Discover series, and the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions.
  • They used website scraping, manual checks, and public databases (like Crossref) to gather details on each article, such as authors, article type, and who the guest editors were.

Key idea they measured:

  • Endogeny: a paper counts as “endogenous” if at least one of its authors is also a guest editor of that same special issue (editorials are excluded because they’re meant to be written by editors).
  • PISS threshold: they labeled a special issue as PISS if more than one-third (>33%) of its non-editorial papers were authored by its own guest editors. The authors chose this “one in three” rule as a clear, simple line: a healthy special issue should lift up at least two outside voices for every one paper by a guest editor.

To find endogeny, they matched cleaned-up guest editor names to author lists. If a guest editor’s name showed up as an author, the paper was flagged as endogenous. This approach is conservative: if the matching missed someone, it would likely undercount the problem.

What they discovered and why it matters

Here are the main results, explained simply:

  • Endogeny is common but usually mild. On average, about 1 in 7 special-issue papers (14%) were written by the guest editors themselves. Many special issues had none.
  • Most special issues are fine. The majority did not cross the PISS line. That’s good news: most guest editors behave responsibly.
  • But PISS still happens a lot in total. Because there are so many special issues now, even a “small” fraction adds up. The study estimates over 1,000 PISS special issues are published every year, hosting tens of thousands of endogenous papers.
  • It’s concentrated in places that publish many special issues. Journals that rely heavily on special issues are much more likely to host PISS. MDPI, in particular, accounts for the vast majority of PISS in this dataset, largely because it publishes so many special issues. Frontiers also has PISS, but at lower average levels.
  • The worst cases are rare, but moderate abuse is widespread. Very extreme special issues (where 3 out of 4 papers are by guest editors) do exist but are not common. More often, PISS shows up as many issues with moderately high endogeny. This “normalization” is risky: lots of small abuses can do big damage over time.
  • Policies seem to help. After the DOAJ (a major journal index) tightened its rules in late 2023—threatening to delist journals if more than 25% of a special issue was by the guest editors—the average endogeny started to drop.

Why this matters:

  • Conflict of interest: Guest editors have power over what gets published. Publishing many of their own papers in the collection they run looks biased.
  • Trust and quality: Science depends on fair review and broad expert input. If special issues are used to pad CVs or boost friends, quality can slip and trust erodes.
  • Money: Many journals charge authors publication fees (APCs). The authors estimate tens of millions of euros may have been spent on PISS papers over 11 years—money that could have funded real research instead.

What this could change going forward

The authors argue that fixing PISS is straightforward:

  • Set clear limits on guest editor authorship in special issues (for example, below 25–30%) and actually enforce them.
  • Make sure guest editors never handle their own papers (a basic conflict-of-interest rule).
  • Keep reliable, transparent data. Publishers should provide stable metadata that clearly marks when a paper is in a special issue and lists the guest editors. This lets watchdogs and indexers (like DOAJ or Clarivate) easily check compliance.
  • Focus on the biggest offenders first. A small number of journals account for most of the PISS; action there would have a big impact fast.

In short, special issues can be a useful way to gather experts around a topic. But when they’re used to promote the editors themselves, the whole scientific “commons” (the shared pool of knowledge we all rely on) gets polluted. The good news is that commonsense rules, plus basic transparency, can keep special issues truly special and fair.

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Knowledge Gaps

Knowledge gaps, limitations, and open questions

Below is a concise list of what remains missing, uncertain, or unexplored in the paper, framed to guide actionable future research:

  • Coverage and representativeness: The dataset spans five publishers (MDPI, Frontiers, BMC, Discover, Phil Trans) and 904 journals; it excludes major ecosystems (e.g., Elsevier, Springer beyond Discover, Wiley, IEEE, ACM, Hindawi), hybrid/subscription journals, and conference proceedings, limiting generalizability.
  • Incomplete and uneven data: 2025 is only partially covered; BMC required manual curation due to poor page standardization; the impact of these gaps on estimates is not quantified.
  • Author/editor identity resolution: Name-based matching (lowercased first given name + first surname) risks both false negatives and false positives; no validation against ORCID or a gold-standard sample to quantify error rates and bias.
  • Special-issue metadata integrity: Publishers’ post-hoc reclassification or removal of “special issue” tags is noted but not measured; the prevalence and magnitude of hidden or dissolved special issues and their effect on endogeny estimates remain unknown.
  • Handling-editor data: Endogeny is defined by guest-editor authorship, regardless of who handled the submission; without handling-editor metadata, direct conflicts of interest cannot be distinguished from indirect ones.
  • Threshold justification and robustness: The >33% PISS cutoff is reasoned but not validated; no sensitivity analysis across alternative thresholds (e.g., 25%, 30%, absolute limits) or discipline-specific norms is presented.
  • Small-issue effects and editor count: The influence of special issue size (e.g., ≤5 papers) and the number of guest editors on endogeny rates is not modeled (e.g., per-editor-normalized endogeny, rounding artifacts in small issues).
  • Article-type heterogeneity: Endogeny is not analyzed by article type (e.g., review vs original research vs methods), limiting insight into whether PISS is disproportionately driven by certain genres.
  • Quality and integrity outcomes: The link between endogeny/PISS and downstream indicators (retractions, corrections, peer-review duration, acceptance rates, citation patterns, “citation cartels”) is not tested.
  • Policy impact causality: The observed post-2023 decline coincident with DOAJ’s 25% rule lacks causal inference; quasi-experimental designs (e.g., difference-in-differences across publishers/journals adopting vs not adopting policies) are needed.
  • Economic cost precision: APC-based cost estimates use a single conservative value (€2000) and ignore waivers, discounts, institutional agreements, currency variation, and publisher-specific fee structures; a more granular cost model is needed.
  • Field, region, and institution heterogeneity: PISS rates are not stratified by discipline, geographic region, institution type, or community size; potential vulnerabilities of smaller or emerging fields remain unexplored.
  • Expanded endogeny networks: The study uses the strict DOAJ definition (guest editors themselves) but does not quantify “network endogeny” involving close collaborators, editorial board ties, or repeated coauthors.
  • Individual-level concentration: While worst-offending journals are identified, concentration among individual guest editors (repeat PISS across issues/journals) and associated career incentives are not analyzed.
  • Dynamics over time: Temporal trajectories of PISS within journals (e.g., before/after editorial leadership changes, policy updates, or growth phases) are not examined.
  • Recruitment practices: The role of mass invitation/spam, conversion rates, and solicitation strategies in driving PISS prevalence is not quantified.
  • Reviewer proximity and process integrity: Overlap between reviewer pools and guest editors’ networks, and its association with endogeny/PISS, is not measured.
  • Compliance and data standards: A concrete, versioned metadata schema (special issue IDs, guest editors, handling editors, article types) and publisher compliance status are proposed in spirit but not defined or evaluated.
  • Generalization to non–gold OA contexts: The behavior of endogeny/PISS in subscription, hybrid, and society journals remains uncharacterized.
  • Unintended consequences of limits: Potential negative impacts of strict endogeny caps on small communities, topical leaders, or legitimate collective scholarship are not assessed; field-specific adaptive policies may be needed.
  • Benchmarking and monitoring protocols: Operational dashboards, sampling frames, alert thresholds, and audit procedures for indexers/publishers are not specified or tested for reliability and feasibility.
  • Issue viability policies: The effects of publisher rules (minimum articles per special issue, dissolution/reclassification rules) on endogeny measurement and incentives are noted but not empirically quantified.
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Practical Applications

Immediate Applications

The following applications can be deployed now using the dataset, definitions, and workflows proposed in the paper, together with existing publishing infrastructure and indexer policies.

  • Endogeny monitoring dashboards for journals and publishers
    • Sector: software, publishing
    • Tool/product: “Endogeny Monitor” dashboard that automatically matches guest editor names to author lists and computes endogeny volume per special issue and “Journal PISS rate.”
    • Workflow: nightly ingestion of Crossref/publisher metadata → name-normalization → endogeny calculation → alerts when thresholds (e.g., 25% DOAJ or 33% PISS) are breached.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: accurate, stable SI, editor, and author metadata; publisher cooperation; robust name disambiguation to reduce false negatives.
  • Automated compliance checks in editorial management systems
    • Sector: software, publishing
    • Tool/product: plugins for ScholarOne/Editorial Manager/Frontiers/MDPI systems that block guest editors from handling their own submissions and cap non-editorial endogenous articles at preset limits (e.g., 0–2 per SI or ≤25–33%).
    • Workflow: at submission, system checks if author is a current guest editor → automatic reassignment to independent handling editor → system tracks endogeny share and freezes new endogenous submissions once the cap is reached.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: integration with role assignments; clear policy; logging for audits.
  • Indexer enforcement and watchlists
    • Sector: policy, software (indexers: DOAJ, Scopus, Web of Science)
    • Tool/product: “PISS Watchlist” integrated into indexer evaluation pipelines to flag journals with high PISS rates for review, potential delisting, or “special issue suspension.”
    • Workflow: indexer ingests the authors’ dataset and ongoing journal data → computes annual endogeny and PISS statistics → triggers actions per policy (warn, downgrade, delist).
    • Assumptions/dependencies: indexer authority and willingness to enforce; ongoing data feeds; clear remediation pathways.
  • APC funding gatekeeping by institutions and funders
    • Sector: finance, academia, policy, healthcare
    • Tool/product: APC reimbursement rule engines that deny or condition payments for articles in PISS special issues or in journals with elevated PISS rates.
    • Workflow: grant offices and university libraries cross-check invoices against the PISS Watchlist or dashboard metrics → block payments or require justification/exemptions.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: access to article-level SI status and PISS flags; funder policy updates; risk of metadata manipulation by publishers needs monitoring.
  • Tenure, promotion, and research assessment guidance
    • Sector: academia, education
    • Tool/product: departmental guidelines to discount or scrutinize outputs from PISS special issues and to require disclosure of guest editor roles.
    • Workflow: candidates list SI status and guest-editor involvement in CVs → committees apply weighted scoring or require independent verification using the dashboard/app.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: institutional buy-in; fair treatment across disciplines; transparent disclosures.
  • Author and reviewer decision support
    • Sector: daily research practice, academia
    • Tool/product: use the public Shiny app and dataset (bit.ly/PISSpaper; paolocrosetto.shinyapps.io/Editors_as_authors/) to vet special issues and journals before submitting or agreeing to review.
    • Workflow: quick check of a target journal’s special issue history and PISS rates → choose compliant venues or decline participation in problematic SIs.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: awareness and training; reliance on current data.
  • Journal-level corrective actions
    • Sector: publishing
    • Tool/product: immediate adoption of simple endogeny rules (e.g., max two non-editorial articles per guest editor per SI, or ≤25–30% endogeny overall; strict prohibition on self-handling).
    • Workflow: edit SI guidelines; add compliance checks; publish transparency reports on SI endogeny and enforcement outcomes.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: editorial leadership support; willingness to publish SI-specific transparency data.
  • Risk-scoring for paper mills and integrity threats
    • Sector: policy, software, publishing
    • Tool/product: combine endogeny metrics with other signals (rapid turnaround, citation cartels, reviewer overlap) to yield a composite integrity risk score per SI and journal.
    • Workflow: ingest multi-signal data → risk scoring → targeted audits and interventions.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: access to process metadata; agreed thresholds; cross-organizational coordination.
  • Media and stakeholder communication on economic impact
    • Sector: policy, finance, science communication
    • Tool/product: briefings for funders, ministries, and universities quantifying APC leakage (€33–87 million over 11 years in this sample) and opportunity costs (e.g., foregone grants).
    • Workflow: tailor summaries per country/discipline → motivate policy changes in APC reimbursement and SI oversight.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: transferability of cost estimates; acceptance by stakeholders.

Long-Term Applications

These applications require further standardization, infrastructure, cross-publisher agreements, or research development before wide deployment.

  • Standardized, open SI metadata schema and APIs
    • Sector: software, publishing, policy
    • Tool/product: a community standard (e.g., via Crossref/OpenAlex) for persistent SI identifiers, guest editor roles, article SI linking, and editorial handling provenance.
    • Workflow: publishers deposit SI/role metadata with Crossref and OpenAlex; indexers, funders, and institutions consume these APIs for compliance and analytics.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: consensus on schema; versioning and permanence; publisher adherence; GDPR and privacy considerations for role data.
  • Industry consortium for SI integrity and certification
    • Sector: policy, publishing
    • Tool/product: a certification program (“SI Integrity Seal”) confirming adherence to endogeny limits, self-handling prohibitions, and transparency reporting, audited annually.
    • Workflow: journals apply; audits performed using standardized data; certification influences indexing status and APC reimbursement eligibility.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: incentives (indexing, APC access); independent auditors; enforcement mechanisms.
  • Adaptive policy models across disciplines
    • Sector: academia, policy
    • Tool/product: discipline-sensitive endogeny thresholds and exemptions (e.g., very small subfields, invited methodological notes) with robust safeguards and disclosure.
    • Workflow: community consultation → policy calibration → periodic review informed by data (trend analysis).
    • Assumptions/dependencies: diverse stakeholder input; guardrails against abuse; longitudinal evidence.
  • Editorial process provenance tracking
    • Sector: software, publishing
    • Tool/product: cryptographically signed workflow logs (e.g., verifiable credentials) that record editor assignments, reviewer identities (optionally anonymized), and conflicts-of-interest handling.
    • Workflow: editorial platforms generate tamper-evident process records; indexers audit samples; authors and institutions can verify integrity claims.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: secure infrastructure; privacy-preserving designs; cost and complexity management.
  • Integration of endogeny metrics into journal metrics and evaluation ecosystems
    • Sector: policy, analytics (Clarivate, Elsevier, Scopus, Dimensions)
    • Tool/product: public “SI integrity” sub-scores in journal profiles, displayed alongside impact metrics; penalties for persistent PISS rates.
    • Workflow: compute and publish SI integrity indices; link to editorial board accountability and renewal decisions.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: indexer cooperation; risk of gaming via metadata manipulation; transparency commitments.
  • Machine learning models for proactive anomaly detection
    • Sector: software, publishing integrity
    • Tool/product: ML systems that predict PISS risk and related integrity issues from early signals (SI scope, invited editor network, solicitation patterns, turnaround times).
    • Workflow: train on historical data; deploy to flag high-risk SIs pre-launch; guide targeted oversight.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: high-quality labeled datasets; bias mitigation; publisher willingness to act on predictions.
  • Reshaping OA business models to reduce incentives
    • Sector: policy, finance, publishing
    • Tool/product: pilot models (e.g., diamond OA, subscribe-to-open, community APC pools with integrity gating) that diminish pressure to scale SIs for revenue.
    • Workflow: funders and institutions channel support to integrity-verified journals/SIs; conditional funding based on compliance and outcomes.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: stakeholder alignment; financial sustainability; monitoring capacity.
  • Ethics education and accreditation for guest editors
    • Sector: education, academia
    • Tool/product: mandatory micro-credential programs on SI ethics (conflicts-of-interest, endogeny limits, reviewer sourcing), tied to eligibility to lead SIs.
    • Workflow: training completion → registry of accredited guest editors → journals select from accredited pool.
    • Assumptions/dependencies: journal buy-in; scalable training; measurable impact.
  • National/regional regulatory frameworks
    • Sector: policy, government
    • Tool/product: legal or quasi-legal standards requiring transparent SI metadata, prohibiting stealth status changes, and mandating reporting of endogeny statistics for publicly funded APCs.
    • Workflow: regulatory adoption → compliance audits → sanctions for non-compliance (e.g., ineligibility for public APC support).
    • Assumptions/dependencies: legislative appetite; harmonization across borders; enforcement costs.
  • Cross-field integrity observatories
    • Sector: academia, policy
    • Tool/product: independent observatories that publish periodic “state of SIs” reports tracking endogeny, PISS prevalence, and responses, with open datasets and replication packages.
    • Workflow: continuous data collection → public dashboards → community feedback loops; integration with reform initiatives (e.g., the Stockholm Declaration).
    • Assumptions/dependencies: sustained funding; publisher cooperation; neutral governance.

In summary, the paper’s dataset, definitions, and findings enable immediate auditing, policy enforcement, and workflow changes to reduce excessive endogeny in special issues, while pointing to long-term infrastructure and governance reforms that can align incentives and restore integrity at scale.

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Glossary

  • APCs (Article Processing Charges): Fees paid by authors or their institutions to cover the costs of open-access publishing. "In the Gold OA model, where authors or institutions pay APCs, publishers can increase revenues by publishing more papers."
  • Citation cartel: A coordinated group that strategically cites one another to inflate metrics and visibility. "Guest editors are further known to offer easy routes to publishing for their colleagues (including citation cartels) [9]"
  • Common pool resource: A shared resource susceptible to overuse when individual incentives are misaligned with collective welfare. "Since the scientific literature is a common pool resource this is not good news, as it reflects a widespread normalisation of guest editor misconduct."
  • CrossRef: A nonprofit infrastructure providing DOIs and scholarly metadata linking for research outputs. "Author data was cross- referenced using CrossRef [21]."
  • DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals): A community-curated index and watchdog for open-access journals that sets and enforces policy standards. "DOAJ guidelines, updated in late 2023, which threatened to delist journals that host special issues containing more than 25% endogeny [15]."
  • DOI (Digital Object Identifier): A persistent identifier for uniquely referencing digital scholarly objects and their metadata. "many publishers have an open policy to modify DOI- indexed article metadata:"
  • Editorial (article type): A non-research article written by editors offering perspective or guidance, often excluded from quantitative analyses. "Editorial articles were excluded from special issue article totals and endogeny calculations."
  • Endogenous: An article in a special issue authored by at least one of that issue’s guest editors (excluding editorials). "We label a special issue article authored by at least one guest editor of the special issue, other than an editorial, as endogenous."
  • Endogeny: The practice of a guest editor publishing a non-editorial article in their own special issue, creating a conflict of interest. "In this paper we look in depth at one instance of such an abuse of delegated trust: endogeny, which we define as the practice of a guest editor publishing a non-editorial article in one's own special issue (per DOAJ [15])."
  • Endogeny volume: The proportion of endogenous articles within a special issue. "We further describe the proportion of endogenous articles within a PISS special as its endogeny volume."
  • Gold Open Access (OA): An open-access model where the final published version is freely available immediately, typically funded via APCs. "In the Gold OA model, where authors or institutions pay APCs, publishers can increase revenues by publishing more papers."
  • Guest editor: An invited researcher who oversees the editorial process for a themed special issue. "Guest editors also mobilize their networks to attract more papers and source reviewers, further increasing the publisher's revenue from APCs [7,8]."
  • Impact inflation: The artificial or policy-driven boosting of journal-level impact indicators. "observations of its journal naming conventions and impact inflation mirroring those of MDPI [18]."
  • Indexers: Organizations that catalog journals and articles and may set/enforce publishing policies and standards. "despite endogeny policies by publishers and indexers, PISS is comparable in magnitude to scientific fraud."
  • Journal PISS rate: The share of a journal’s special issues that exceed the PISS threshold. "Finally, we also use 'Journal PISS rate' to refer to the proportion of special issues in a given journal that are classified as PISS."
  • OpenAlex: An open, comprehensive index of scholarly works, entities, and relationships. "We urge publishers to provide these data to open repositories such as OpenAlex [42] or CrossRef [21], including permanent version-specific identifiers needed to track endogeny (e.g., special issue, author, and editor metadata)."
  • ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID): A persistent digital identifier that uniquely distinguishes researchers. "Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID)"
  • Paper mill: An organization that produces or brokers fraudulent or low-integrity papers at scale. "There is evidence that hosting many special issues is a hallmark of questionable journals that enable research paper mill activity [9-12]."
  • PISS (Published in Support of Self): A special issue in which more than one-third of non-editorial articles are authored by its guest editors. "We define special issues containing more than 33% endogeny as Published in Support of Self (PISS)."
  • Shiny App: A web application built with R’s Shiny framework for interactive data exploration and visualization. "We have also made our data available to explore through a Shiny App accessible at: https://paolocrosetto.shinyapps.io/Editors as authors/."
  • Special issue: A themed collection of papers within a journal, typically managed by guest editors and often associated with a specific topic or event. "Special issues provide such an outlet, with generally lower turnaround times and higher article acceptance rates."
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