Elsevier Becomes a Global Leader by Issuing Policy Change on Organ Transplantation Research

Elsevier has updated the author guidelines for several of its transplant journals to explicitly reference “prisoners of conscience” and the Global Rights Compliance (GRC) Advisory on transplantation research, making Elsevier the first major publisher to formally address the issue in its editorial policy.

This marks a notable tightening of publication ethics in this field, as the revised guidance now states that affected journals “will not accept manuscripts that contain data derived from unethically sourced organs or tissue, including from executed prisoners or prisoners of conscience,” explicitly citing GRC’s recommendations on mitigating human rights risks in transplantation medicine.

Authors submitting clinical studies must now provide “sufficient evidence” that organs or tissues were procured in line with the WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation, and manuscripts must include an affirmative statement that “autonomous consent free from coercion was obtained from the donor(s) or their next of kin” and that organs were not sourced from executed prisoners or prisoners of conscience.

A statement of informed consent, paired with institutional ethical approval, may be accepted as sufficient evidence, but journals reserve the right to demand additional proof if the source of organs or tissues is not judged sufficiently transparent and traceable.

The policy update has been applied across multiple Elsevier-published transplant journals, several of which are affiliated with major transplant societies:

• American Journal of Transplantation (American Society of Transplant Surgeons and the American Society of Transplantation)
• Transplantation Proceedings (Asian Transplantation Society; Andalusian Transplantation Society; Brazilian Transplantation Society; Hellenic Transplantation Society; Hungarian Transplantation Society; International Society of Organ Donation and Procurement; Italian Transplantation Society; Japan/Korea Transplantation Society Forum; Latin America and the Caribbean Transplantation Society; Luso-Brazilian Congresses; Polish Transplantation Society; Portuguese Transplantation Society; Spanish Transplantation Society; Turkish Transplantation Centers Coordinators Association)
• The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation (International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation)
• Transplant Immunology 
• Journal of Liver Transplantation 

This policy shift follows earlier enforcement action when in October 2025, Elsevier retracted eight Chinese transplant-research papers following ethical concerns raised by the 2019 BMJ Open scoping review regarding the hundreds of Chinese transplant papers that failed to comply with international standards banning use of organs from executed prisoners. To date, 60 papers have been retracted across various publishers in response to the scoping review, with further retractions expected in the coming months.

ELSEVIER’S FULL POLCY STATEMENT:

This journal will not accept manuscripts that contain data derived from unethically sourced organs or tissue, including from executed prisoners or prisoners of conscience, consistent with recommendations by Global Rights Compliance on Mitigating Human Rights Risks in Transplantation Medicine. For all studies that use human organs or tissues, sufficient evidence must be provided that these were procured in line with WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation.

For clinical studies, a statement of informed consent having been obtained from a patient or their nominated representative, paired with ethical approval for the study from a suitable institution, as required by the policies of the journal, may be considered sufficient evidence, but the journal reserves the right to request additional evidence in cases where it feels this is not sufficient. The source of the organs or tissues used in clinical research must be transparent and traceable. If your manuscript describes organ transplantation you must additionally declare within the manuscript that:

• autonomous consent free from coercion was obtained from the donor(s) or their next of kin
• organs and/or tissues were not sourced from executed prisoners or prisoners of conscience.