To report a problem with an article we have published, email the editorial office, using the address given on our Submit page. Give the article title and DOI, state the specific concern with evidence, and say what you are asking for. We do not yet publish a formal complaints procedure.
That last sentence is the honest part. What follows is the route that exists today, the template to send, and where our published policies stop short of what COPE leads a reader to expect.
How to report a problem with an article published by Directive Publications
Send the report by email to the editorial office, using the address given on our Submit page. Manuscripts reach us by email rather than through a submission portal, and a report is best sent the same way: an email leaves a dated written record of what you raised and when.
Put the DOI in the subject line. A DOI is a persistent identifier for one specific article, so it removes any doubt about which paper you mean. Every article we publish has one under the prefix 10.52338, registered with Crossref and resolvable through doi.org.
Use one email per article, and keep your own copy of what you sent and when.
What COPE Core Practices lead you to expect from any publisher
The COPE Core Practices are ten practices COPE expects a journal or publisher to have in place and to describe publicly. Five bear directly on a reader raising a concern about a published article.
| Core Practice | What it leads a reader to expect |
|---|---|
| Complaints and appeals | The publisher has a clearly described process for complaints about itself, its journals and its editors — and publishes that description. |
| Allegations of misconduct | The publisher responds to allegations about published or submitted work, and cooperates with the body able to investigate it. |
| Post-publication discussions and corrections | The published record can be corrected, and there is a stated mechanism for readers to raise concerns. |
| Ethical oversight | Concerns about consent, ethics approval or data handling are treated as substantive matters, not editorial taste. |
| Intellectual property | Plagiarism and copyright concerns are in scope of a report, not outside it. |
Our editorial policies are written to align with the COPE Core Practices. Alignment is not membership, and we do not claim membership.
What we publish today, and the complaints policy we do not
These pages exist: Publication Ethics, Research Integrity, Corrections Policy and our Plagiarism Policy. Between them they cover how the record is corrected and what we treat as an integrity matter.
What does not exist is a separate, published complaints and misconduct-allegations procedure. That means we have not published a response time, a confidentiality commitment, a description of who assesses an allegation, or the stages an assessment passes through. We will not describe a process we have not written down, and you should know that before you send a report.
The practical consequence: send the report anyway, in writing, keep your copy, and treat the escalation routes set out later in this post as live options, not last resorts.
The report template to send
A report on a published article that can be acted on contains eight things. Anything vaguer is harder to act on.
| Include | What to write |
|---|---|
| Article identity | Full title, journal name, and the DOI. |
| Exact location | Section, page, figure number, table number, or the sentence itself. |
| The concern in one sentence | State it flatly: Figure 3B appears to reuse the panel published as Figure 1A in the cited paper. |
| Evidence | Screenshots, the comparison source with its DOI, your re-run calculation, the registry record. |
| What you are asking for | Correction, an added declaration, an expression of concern, retraction, or simply an author response. |
| Naming consent | Whether you consent to your name being given to the authors. |
| Your competing interests | Any rivalry, dispute, or authorship of work the article criticises. |
| Contact details | Name, affiliation if you have one, email, and ORCID if you have one. |
Subject: Concern regarding DOI 10.52338/[rest of the DOI]
Dear Editorial Office,
I am writing about the following article published in [journal name]:
Title: [full title]
DOI: [10.52338/...]
Concern: [one sentence stating the problem and its exact location — figure, table, section or sentence.]
Evidence: [what you checked, and how. Attach or link the comparison source with its DOI, the screenshot or registry entry, or your re-analysis. Number each item.]
What I am asking for: [correction / added declaration / expression of concern / retraction / an author response.]
Consent to be named: [I consent to my name being shared with the authors] OR [I ask that my name is not shared with the authors. I understand no confidentiality policy is published, and accept that limitation.]
Competing interests: [none, or state them.]
I can supply the underlying files on request.
[Name, affiliation, email, ORCID]
What counts as evidence in a report
Evidence is anything a third party can check without taking your word for it: a side-by-side image comparison with both DOIs, a trial registry entry showing a primary outcome that differs from the one reported, the earlier article whose sentences match, a recalculation from the paper's own table shown step by step. An assertion that something looks wrong is a starting point, not a report.
Deciding whether to be named to the authors
Say either way, explicitly, because a report that is silent on naming forces someone to guess. Being named lets the authors answer you directly. Staying unnamed is legitimate, particularly if the authors are senior to you or able to affect your career. Since no confidentiality policy is published here, weigh that choice on the assumption that we cannot promise what we have not written down.
What can happen to a published article after a report
Four outcomes are the ones worth naming in a report, and it helps to say which one you are asking for.
- No change. The concern is examined and the article stands. A reasoned answer to you belongs to this outcome, not silence.
- Correction. A published notice fixing a specific error — a mislabelled figure, a wrong value, a missing declaration — while the findings stand.
- Expression of concern. A published notice recording that a serious question has been raised and is not yet resolved, so readers can weigh the article accordingly.
- Retraction. A published notice withdrawing the article's findings. The article normally stays online, marked as retracted, so the record is not erased.
Our Corrections Policy covers how we correct the published record. One point is worth stating plainly: a publisher can correct the literature, but a publisher is not the body that establishes whether research misconduct occurred. Confirming whether data were fabricated needs lab records, ethics files and the people involved, and that access belongs to the authors' institution — which is why the escalation table in the next section starts with that institution.
What to escalate to, and when, if a publisher does not respond
If a publisher — ours included — has not replied within a few weeks, escalate in parallel rather than waiting. Each body below can do something a publisher cannot.
| Escalate to | When | What they can do |
|---|---|---|
| The research integrity officer at the corresponding author's institution | The concern is about the conduct of the research: data, images, consent, ethics approval, authorship | Open a formal investigation, with access to records and people |
| The funder named in the funding statement | The work was grant-funded and the concern is material | Apply its own research integrity conditions to the grant |
| The ethics committee named in the article | Approval or consent is in question | Confirm whether the stated approval exists and covers the work |
| COPE, if the publisher is a member | A member publisher fails to follow the Core Practices | Consider a complaint against that member; check membership on COPE's site first |
| The public record | Nothing moves and your evidence is checkable by anyone | A signed public comment on a post-publication review platform puts the evidence where other readers see it |
Write to an institution with the same discipline you would use with a publisher: article, DOI, concern, evidence, what you are asking for. The ICMJE Recommendations and COPE's flowcharts assume the same division of labour: the institution establishes the facts, the journal corrects the record.
If the article is your own, the route is different
An author correcting their own article is not making a complaint: write from the corresponding author's address, describe the change, say whether the findings are affected, and confirm all co-authors agree. Our Corrections Policy covers that route.
The policies behind this sit on our Publication Ethics, Research Integrity and Corrections Policy pages, and the complaints procedure that should sit beside them is not published yet. If figures are involved, read the line between legitimate adjustment and image manipulation first; what a retraction is and what it does to the record explains the outcome people ask for most often; and the COPE Core Practices explained for authors sets out the standard we are measured against here.