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

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 one’s 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.