Previously (and perhaps even now)
- We used to advise our students that publishing in special issues could be good as the reviewers are probably more aligned to the topic of the SI and the reviews might be more meaningful as the reviewers, perhaps, knew more about the topic of the SI.
- The downside is, it could take time to publish as all the SI articles were published at the same time and the special issue could only be published once the ‘slowest’ final paper had finished the review process.
- A special issue was limited to a given number of articles or, rather, to a given number of pages. This is due to a special issue (usually) occupying one issue of a journal so it could only publish (say) 6-10 articles depending on the pages allocated to an issue and the length of the submitted papers.
- It was also unusual for a journal to have more than a few special issues in any given year. In our experience, six would be a lot.
Present
- We cannot comment on whether special issues still have reviewers that are more aligned with the topic than regular issues, if indeed they ever were – that is just our view.
- Now that many journals publish only online, they are able to publish articles as they get reviewed. There are many examples of papers being published before the closing date of the special issue.
This could be seen as a positive as articles are published a lot quicker than was previously possible. - Another benefit (or not) of publishing online only is that a special issue is not restricted to a given number of pages. This means that the number of papers is (effectively) unlimited.
Perhaps this detracts a little from publishing in a special issue as it could be seen a less competitive? - Special issues now seem to be an important part of the underlying business model for some publishers, particularly those than publish using an open access model.
Is this because they are seen as a good way of getting more papers, and thus more income from APC’s, or is there another reason that some publishers utilize special issues?
Your view
We’d be interested in your views on special issues and how the landscape has changed over the past 10 years or so.
We are considering putting together some evidence that might form the basis of a peer reviewed paper. Not sure how we would collect, collate and analyze that evidence; but that is for another day.
Image acknowledgement
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