I guess anything is possible but I doubt that those journals, who depend so much on their perception of quality would so easily compromise it. If this is confir

I guess anything is possible but I doubt that those journals, who depend so much on their perception of quality would so easily compromise it. If this is confirmed it would be a business disaster for them. What to me would sound less unlikely (and I am totally on the outside of all of this), if PIs take into account editor's interests and preferences -- that is, if you know that editor is interested in topic A (say, oxygen on exoplanets) you might lean in that direction with the paper you hope to publish there (e.g., in abstract / intro / conclusion stress how your research supports existence or lack thereof of oxygen). Also not impossible to know if an issue is dedicated to a specific grand theme, so articles on that have a significantly higher acceptance chance. Whether this is 100% kosher or not can be debated, but this is far, far off from agreements that a journal will publish whatever a specific researcher writes.