A journal has been contacted by a group of authors from Ukraine who wish to retract their article because of acute ethical issues in relation to the war with Russia. The authors are employees of a research institute in Ukraine. When preparing their article they were not fully informed about the country of the organisers of the conference. They are concerned that participation in a Russian conference may bring dismissal from their posts, and also potentially imprisonment.
The publisher's first step was to request written permission from all the authors.
Questions for the Forum
- What actions should the publisher take in this case?
- Should the publisher delete the article completely so that no longer appears on the platform?
- How should the notice of withdrawal be drawn up?
- How can we protect the authors?
Update
Given the critical situation of this very specific case the publisher had to act prior to the Forum. They decided after collecting the approval of all the authors and the editor in charge of this paper to fully withdraw this article from the publication. They published a note without transparently displaying the real reason for the withdrawal to ensure the safety of the authors.
Additional questions for the Forum
- Did the publisher take the right action in this case?
- Given that other publishers may find themselves in a similar situation in future, are there any general ethical principles that should be considered?
COPE’s 2017 discussion of authorship and politics is a useful starting point for issues where political situations affect author safety. It recommends that each case be assessed carefully based on as much information as possible, and that full records be kept of the actions taken. Where retraction would not normally be warranted on the basis of an author wishing to disassociate themselves from an article, the safety of humans comes before issues of publication ethics. Editors may therefore choose to issue an editorial note indicating the authors’ removal (if possible without retraction of the paper). The publisher should also consider contacting the authors’ institution(s) as long as that would not pose additional threats to any of the authors.
There are other, practical, issues which editors will need to discuss. Ideally, journals should have policies in place for dealing with situations like this so that they have protocols to draw on. Editors will need to think about the wording of any removal notice as the metadata (including the author list) will usually be left intact. It may be necessary to take advice from legal teams to see if this information can be completely removed; this can be difficult but author safety can outweigh usual practices.
Editors should also satisfy themselves as far as possible that there are no other reasons for seeking removal of author names which would not warrant the record being changed.
There are several support agencies who can provide other assistance for authors in this position and it may be helpful to refer individuals here. For example, the Council for At-Risk Academics, and Scholars at Risk.
After collecting the approval of all the authors and the editor in charge of this paper the publisher decided to fully withdraw the article from the publication. They published a note without transparently displaying the real reason for the withdrawal to ensure the safety of the authors. Since then several similar cases have been received and the publisher intends to follow the advice of the COPE Forum.