Wolters Kluwer Journals Advance Ethical Standards with Updated Policy on Organ Transplantation Research

Wolters Kluwer has updated the author guidelines for three of its leading hepatology and transplant journals to explicitly reference “prisoners of conscience” and the Global Rights Compliance (GRC) Advisory on transplantation research. The revised guidance prohibits manuscripts containing data derived from unethically sourced organs or tissue and requires clear declarations of ethical procurement and consent.

This update aligns the journals with the strongest current standards in publication ethics for transplant research (see Elsevier’s policy change) and advocacy and recommendations directed to publishers on these issues.

The policy now states that the journals “will not accept manuscripts that contain data derived from unethically sourced organs or tissue, including from executed prisoners or prisoners of conscience,” consistent with GRC recommendations on mitigating human rights risks in transplantation medicine.

For all studies using human organs or tissues, authors must provide sufficient evidence that the material was procured in line with the WHO Guiding Principles on Human Cell, Tissue and Organ Transplantation, as well as by Declaration of Istanbul. The source of organs or tissues must be transparent and traceable.

For clinical studies, a statement of informed consent (from the patient or nominated representative) paired with institutional ethical approval may be considered sufficient evidence, though the journals reserve the right to request additional proof where transparency is judged inadequate. Manuscripts describing organ transplantation must additionally declare within the text that:

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

The policy has been implemented in the instructions for authors of (see under ‘Ethics’ section):

• Hepatology (American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases)
• Liver Transplantation (American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and International Liver Transplantation Society)
• Hepatology Communications (American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases)

This development builds on Wolters Kluwer’s earlier enforcement actions, including the retraction of nine Chinese transplant research papers from Liver Transplantation, Hepatology, and Transplantation. To date, more than 60 papers have been retracted across publishers in response to the Rogers et al. 2019 BMJ Open scoping review that identified widespread failures in ethical reporting of donor sources in Chinese transplant literature.

ETAC welcomes this strengthening of editorial standards and the clear alignment with international ethical norms.