Wiley Will Issue an Expression of Concern Before an Investigation Finishes

Wiley’s policy is organised around a single operating problem: an integrity concern and a finished investigation rarely arrive at the same time, and the policy has to say what happens in the gap between them.

Retraction. Issued once “it has been determined that the findings reported in a published research article cannot be relied upon”. Named triggers include major errors that invalidate the conclusions — whether from misconduct or honest error — redundant publication, plagiarism or authorship manipulation, unethical research, and systematic manipulation of the publishing process.

Expression of Concern. Used where there are serious concerns but not yet enough evidence to retract. It may follow an inconclusive investigation, provided there are “strong indicators that the concerns are valid”, or it may be issued during an investigation that is still running, because “a final decision may not be available for a considerable time” — an acknowledgement that readers deserve a signal before the process concludes, not only after.

Corrections. For a less serious error, the journal’s editor and the publisher together decide whether it is significant enough to merit a correction notice.

Process and permanence. Integrity concerns go through Wiley’s Research Integrity Team form, routed to the Integrity Assurance & Case Resolution team, which investigates and resolves cases with the journal’s editors under Wiley’s ethics guidelines, the journal’s own author guidelines, and COPE guidance. Every amendment is designed to be permanent, accessible and indexable, following NISO CREC (Communication of Retractions, Removals and Expressions of Concern) recommended practice — a detail few of the other publishers in this set name explicitly.

Allowing an Expression of Concern to be issued mid-investigation, rather than only after one concludes, answers a real timing problem directly: an investigation into fabricated data or compromised peer review can take months or years, and a reader citing or relying on the article during that period deserves a visible signal that something is under review, rather than silence until a final answer arrives.

Naming NISO CREC specifically is a quieter but meaningful commitment: it ties Wiley’s amendments to an external, machine-readable standard for how retraction and concern notices propagate to indexes, citation databases and discovery tools, which is what actually determines whether a reader finds the notice when they encounter the article years later.

Separating correction decisions (editor and publisher jointly) from retraction and concern decisions (a dedicated Integrity Assurance & Case Resolution team working with editors) reflects a real difference in stakes: a correction is routine editorial judgement, where a retraction or concern is reputational and evidentiary, and the policy gives the heavier process to the heavier outcome.

How it reaches a specific journal. The policy is published at Wiley group level, and a society journal Wiley publishes on behalf of another organisation follows the same process, with the society’s editorial team involved alongside Wiley’s Integrity Assurance & Case Resolution team.

Given how many Wiley journals have had large retraction batches in recent years, the practical point for an author is procedural: the dedicated form and case-resolution team exist because the volume of concerns being raised has made an ad hoc, editor-by-editor process unworkable at scale.