Special issues

Introduction

ImportantProblem statement

Special issues serve the historically recent alignment of incentives of open-access publishers with the pre-existing needs of authors under “publish or perish”. Authors, pressured by a need to evidence productivity, look for easier and faster ways to publish their studies. Special issues provide such an outlet, with generally lower turnaround times and higher article acceptance rates (Crosetto et al. 2026).

Special issue hacking, as seen in Crosetto et al. (2026). Reproduced under CC BY 4.0 license.

Key resources

Note“The Issue with Special Issues”

An explanation of the problem by Crosetto et al. (2026).

Note“The strain on scientific publishing”

An analysis by Hanson et al. (2024).

Bibliography

Crosetto, Paolo, Pablo Gómez Barreiro, and Mark Austin Hanson. 2026. “The Issue with Special Issues: When Guest Editors Publish in Support of Self.” arXiv:2601.07563. Preprint, arXiv, June 10. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.07563.

Hanson, Mark A., Pablo Gómez Barreiro, Paolo Crosetto, and Dan Brockington. 2024. “The Strain on Scientific Publishing.” Quantitative Science Studies 5 (4): 823–43. https://doi.org/10.1162/qss_a_00327.