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 ones 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.

翻译：近期特刊数量的异常增长导致了科学出版史上最大规模的编辑权力下放。这种权力是否得到了负责任的使用？本文首次系统分析了客座编辑滥用权力的一种特殊形式：内生性发表，即在自身担任客座编辑的特刊中发表论文的行为。虽然适度的内生性在特刊中较为常见，但过度的内生性则是明显的学术不端行为。我们将内生性比例超过33%的特刊定义为"自利性发表特刊"。我们构建了一个包含五大出版商在2015年至2025年间出版的超过10万期特刊的数据集。绝大多数客座编辑即使存在内生性发表行为，也保持了负责任的态度。然而，尽管出版商和索引机构制定了内生性政策，自利性发表特刊的规模仍可与学术欺诈相提并论。所有严重依赖特刊的期刊都存在自利性发表现象，每年出版超过1000期自利性发表特刊，包含数万篇内生性论文。极端的自利性发表滥用较为罕见，多数自利性发表特刊的内生性水平处于中等程度。由于科学文献属于公共资源池，这并非好消息，反映出客座编辑不端行为的普遍常态化。值得庆幸的是，通过制定易于执行的常识性政策即可解决自利性发表问题。我们提供了索引机构和学术监管机构采取行动所需的数据与分析。