Last updated: November 28, 2024

Policies on handling allegations from whistleblowers

Although Baishideng Publishing Group (BPG) adheres strictly to publication ethics in its handling of each manuscript and all published articles undergo strict single-blind external peer review, some criticism of published articles cannot be avoided. Criticisms in the form of allegations may come forth from anonymous or transparent/self-disclosed sources related to concerns about the soundness of published data, plagiarism, figure manipulation, or other forms of misconduct. To better respond to people when concerns about a published article are raised to us, we handle these allegations in consultation with all relevant guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and in alignment with our Policies on Handling Allegations from Whistleblowers as follows:

Step 1: Any allegations received by BPG will be immediately communicated directly in their original form to the Editorial Office, with confirmation of receipt by the latter. The Editorial Office will not ‘out’ any whistleblower who wishes to be anonymous.

Step 2: The Editorial Office first carefully verifies if the allegations contain specific and detailed evidence to support the claim: (1) If yes, it will further investigate the allegations and respond to the whistleblower about their efforts and findings (anonymous sources may not be reachable); and (2) If no, it will request the whistleblower to provide more detail. When the additional detail is provided, the Editorial Office will confirm receipt to the whistleblower and initiate further investigation into the allegations; otherwise, if no more details are provided and the whistleblower persists with vague claims, it will reply to the whistleblower that we cannot pursue the investigation of their allegations further.

Step 3: The investigation by the Editorial Office into the allegations/concerns raised by the whistleblower is carried out in accordance to the appropriate COPE guideline and in conjunction with contact with the corresponding author of the article to provide him/her the opportunity to explain their response to the allegations/concerns.

Step 4: Immediately upon confirmation of the allegations/concerns, the Editorial Office will take action on the article, ranging from publication of a correction up to retraction.

Step 5: The Editorial Office will contact the whistleblower who originally raised the concern to inform them of the outcome of the investigation.