A Special Issue (SI) can be defined as: "a collection of articles on a hot topical research area within the scope of the journal". Generally, SI is proposed by a Lead Guest Editor. The SIs will provide a venue for research on emerging areas, highlight important subdisciplines, or describe new cross-disciplinary applications.

While the Topical Collection (TC) can be defined as: "papers on a given topic, theme, author, or problem. Collecting such an issue can be triggered by the organization of a specialized conference, a symposium, or a project".

The difference with the traditional SI is that articles belonging to a TC are published continuously and are therefore not assigned to one issue. However, all of the papers in a TC are collected together and prominently displayed in that form on the website. TCs receive their own link and are specially tagged to make them easier to share and find.

My question is: Is it possible to consider publishing manuscripts in SI/TC with the same value and quality as publishing the same manuscript in the regular issues? Is there any bias in the process of publishing papers which has the same topic as the SI/TC but less quality?