How political situations affect author safety

COPE 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.