Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A publisher requires every special issue to have at least two guest editors, one of whom must already sit on the journal's standing editorial board, and independently verifies the second editor's institutional email domain, ORCID record, and prior publication history before approving the issue.
- Is an instance
A journal runs a post-acceptance audit on special issues, checking peer-review turnaround times, reviewer identities, and citation patterns for the signs (unusually fast reviews, reviewers with no traceable publication record, clustered self-citation) that indicate a guest editor's process was compromised or bypassed.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A journal invites someone to guest-edit a special issue on the strength of an unsolicited email and a personal connection to a handling editor, without independently checking the candidate's institutional affiliation, ORCID history, or standing in the field — filling out an invitation form is not vetting if none of the claimed credentials are actually confirmed.
Editorial commentary
Guest editor vetting is the set of checks a journal or publisher applies before granting someone editorial authority over a themed special issue — the power to solicit manuscripts, assign peer reviewers, and recommend accept/reject decisions for that issue. Because a guest editor is typically an outside researcher recruited for a single issue rather than a permanent, previously-vetted member of the journal’s standing editorial board, this is one of the weaker links in journal governance, and it has become a documented, exploited attack vector for organized manuscript fraud.
Why special issues attract paper mills
Special issues let a journal scale up submissions quickly around a themed topic, and guest editors are often recruited with lighter scrutiny than a permanent editor would receive — sometimes via unsolicited email pitches, self-nomination, or a personal connection rather than an independent check of institutional affiliation and publication record. That gap in oversight is exactly what paper mills have targeted: a compromised or complicit guest editor can wave through fabricated or templated manuscripts with minimal genuine peer review, and a single captured guest editor can push large volumes of fraudulent papers through before anyone notices a pattern.
The clearest documented case is Hindawi (acquired by Wiley in 2021), whose share of output running through guest-edited special issues rose sharply in the years before its crisis became public. Beginning in September 2022 Hindawi retracted more than 500 articles tied to compromised peer review in guest-edited issues; the special issues program was paused that October; by 2023 the full-year retraction total across Hindawi journals exceeded 8,000 articles, described by Wiley as more retractions than any single publisher had previously recorded in one year; Clarivate removed a number of Hindawi journals from the Web of Science in March 2023; and Wiley retired the Hindawi brand entirely by 2024 after cumulative retractions passed 11,000 articles. Separately, a 2023 Science investigation documented editors at reputable journals being bribed or otherwise compromised to wave manuscripts through, special issues among the exploited channels. Retraction Watch’s tracking data indicates a substantial share of paper-mill-linked retractions across the industry involve special issues specifically, not general submissions.
What publishers do to vet guest editors
In response, COPE and STM (the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers) jointly publish guidance on guest-edited collections that names inadequate guest-editor vetting, scope drift, and reduced editorial oversight as the specific mechanisms paper mills exploit. Common vetting practices publishers have since adopted or tightened include:
- Verifying real institutional affiliation and publication record — independently confirming a candidate guest editor’s employer, ORCID history, and a genuine track record of published research in the special issue’s subject area, rather than accepting a CV or self-nomination at face value.
- Requiring co-editors — pairing an outside guest editor with at least one member of the journal’s existing, already-vetted editorial board, so no single outside recruit has unilateral control over a special issue’s editorial decisions.
- Capping or scrutinizing special-issue volume — limiting how many special issues a journal runs concurrently, or how many a single guest editor can lead, since a sudden spike in guest-edited output was one of the earliest warning signs identified in the Hindawi case.
- Post-publication and mid-process audits — checking peer-review turnaround times, reviewer identities and traceability, and citation patterns (for example clustered self-citation or citation cartels) for anomalies consistent with a compromised or bypassed review process, both during and after a special issue runs.
- Restricting or removing editorial privileges — revoking a guest editor’s ability to invite further submissions or select reviewers if an audit or a reader/sleuth report raises credible concerns, up to and including removing the individual from the role.
These controls sit alongside, and often overlap with, defenses against a related but distinct failure mode: a hijacked journal, where fraudsters clone or take over a legitimate journal’s identity outright rather than compromising a single guest editor role within a genuine one. Both are downstream of the same underlying threat — the paper mill industry’s need for compliant editorial gatekeepers willing to wave fabricated manuscripts through peer review.
Related terms
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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