Most journals practice special issues fairly responsibly. But it's the worst offenders that contribute most of the PISS. ~90% of PISS in our data come from just 150/904 journals. And it's exactly who you think it is. #MDPI #Frontiers 13/n
And why wouldn't they support PISS? Guest editors may not handle their own articles. But a special issue of ~10 articles can equate to ~$25k in revenue. If an associate editor rejects a paper & the guest editor leaves, the journal loses that money.
Guest-editing creates a COI plain & simple.
12/n
Philosophical Transactions: pr...
Most journals practice special issues fairly responsibly. But it's the worst offenders that contribute most of the PISS. ~90% of PISS in our data come from just 150/904 journals. And it's exactly who you think it is. #MDPI #Frontiers 13/n
PISS also affects the sum value of the literature: 1 person PISSing in the pool of scientific literature? Largely negligible.
Tens of 1000s PISSing in the pool? The water takes on a different hue...
Luckily, PISS is easy to solve: just enforce EXISTING policies by checking the author list!
10/n
a dog is swimming in a blue po...
Far from enforcing their policies, publishers *hide* PISS. We learned most publisher policies ACTIVELY hide PISS by altering article metadata post-hoc. At a *minimum* #Frontiers, #Elsevier, #MDPI all do it publicly! Yikes. 🤯 Thanks to @deevybee.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy et al. for noting this (see pics). 11/n
