Wiley's Policy for Handling Retractions, Withdrawals, and Expressions of Concern

Retractions

Circumstances under which Wiley will retract an article
Wiley is committed to playing its part in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. Articles may be retracted if:

There is major scientific error which would invalidate the conclusions of the article, for example where there is clear evidence that findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error).
Where the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross-referencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication).
Where there are ethical issues such as plagiarism (appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit including those obtained through confidential review of others' manuscripts) or inappropriate authorship (e.g., "guest" authorship; see COPE discussion document 'What constitutes authorship?').
Where unethical research has been reported.

Wiley's retraction process
In order to ensure that retractions are handled according to industry best practice, and in accordance with COPE guidelines, Wiley adopts the following retraction process:

An article requiring potential retraction is brought to the attention of the journal editor and the Integrity Assurance and Case Resolution (IACR) team.
WIth the assistance of the IACR Auditor, the journal editor should follow the step-by-step guidelines according to the COPE flowcharts (including evaluating a response from the author of the article in question) and reach a decision on whether retraction is appropriate..
The final decision to retract is communicated to the author and, if necessary, any other relevant bodies, such as the author's institution.
The retraction notice is then posted online, linked to the article being retracted, and published in the next available issue of the journal (see below for more details of this step).

Process for issuing a retraction notice
Where the decision is taken to retract and the article to be retracted is the Version of Record (i.e. it has been published in Early View or within an issue of a journal), Wiley recommends issuing a retraction notice which should be published separately but linked to the article being retracted. A "retracted" watermark should also be added to the article's PDF; however the article as first published should otherwise be retained online in order to maintain the scientific record. Issuing a retraction notice will mean the following:

The retraction notice will appear on the last numbered page of the journal's issue;
The retraction notice will be listed in the contents page and will include the title of the article being retracted;
The text of the retraction notice will explain why the article is being retracted; and
4. The retraction notice and the retracted article will be clearly linked on Wiley Online Library so that the retraction will be apparent to anyone who comes across the retracted article.

Withdrawals

Circumstances under which an article may be withdrawn (deleted)

Accepted Articles

An Accepted Article is the uncorrected, unedited, non-typeset version of an article published on Wiley Online Library. While an Accepted Article will have been allocated a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), it does not constitute the Version of Record as it is not edited or corrected and does not yet carry complete bibliographic information. Therefore, when an Accepted Article is to be retracted because, for example, it contains errors, has been accidentally submitted twice or any other guideline for retraction, it may be deleted and replaced with a withdrawal notice.

Even in the above circumstances, bibliographic information about the deleted article should be retained for the scientific record, and an explanation given of the reasons for its removal.

Version of Record

It is Wiley's policy to strongly discourage withdrawal of the Version of Record in line with the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers guidelines on retractions and preservation of the objective record of science. Therefore, deletion of the Version of Record is rare, and Wiley will only consider it in limited circumstances, such as the following:

Where there has been a violation of the privacy of a research subject;
Where there are errors to which a member of the general public might be exposed and if followed or adopted, would pose a significant risk to health; or
Where a clearly defamatory comment has been made about others in the relevant field or about their work.

Expressions of Concern

Journal editors may consider issuing an Expression of Concern if they have well-founded concerns and feel that readers should be made aware of them, but do not have evidence that the article should be retracted. Therefore, Expressions of Concern should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the article has proved inconclusive, and if there remain strong indicators that the concerns are valid. See COPE case 17-02 Data manipulation and institute's internal review.

On very rare occasions, an Expression of Concern may be issued while an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time. However, in such cases there must be well-founded grounds to suggest that the concerns are valid.

In all cases, editors should be aware that an Expression of Concern carries the same risks to a researcher's reputation as a retraction, and it is often preferable to wait to publish a retraction until a definitive judgement has been achieved by an independent investigation. See COPE case 15-10 Handling self-admissions of fraud.

Integrity and ethics concerns and questions about these policies can be submitted to Wiley using this form.. Queries received will be directed to the Integrity Assurance & Case Resolution team.