What’s so special about special issues: Highlighting a central role of parasitology to support specific innovations and advance progress within our discipline

Special issues in Parasitology have always proven popular with our readers. Historically, these have covered a diverse set of topics, addressing either specific or broad themes, within our chosen discipline. Looking ahead and taking a broader point of view in this editorial, we consider their academic value and future significance. This is especially important today, and now more than ever, because of their considerable importance they bring to scholarly debate. In a wider context of scientific publishing, however, recent publications have raised debate, both with positive and negative features, of the role that special issues can play (Gleasner and Sood, Reference Gleasner and Sood2024). Here, we add to the debate and highlight some of the more important issues particularly pertinent to Parasitology below. Foremost, the provocative review by Gleasner and Sood (Gleasner and Sood, Reference Gleasner and Sood2024) suggested that reputable academic journals should be more transparent about their editorial processes behind the commissioning or hosting of special issues. As such, we highlight them here, especially for the benefit of our loyal readers and community members, to better illustrate our intentions.