Expression of concern

A formal post-publication notice issued by a journal to alert readers to substantive concerns about a published article when the journal cannot yet conclude that retraction or correction is the appropriate outcome. An expression of concern is appropriate when concerns are credible but unresolved, often pending an institutional investigation.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Ask about Expression of concern

Answers are drawn from this dictionary entry and the rest of the CASRAI corpus, with a link to every source.

Answers are AI-generated from CASRAI’s own published pages and can be wrong, so check the linked sources before relying on one; your question is logged without personal data — never sold, never used to train a third-party model — to show us what CASRAI is missing, so please do not type personal or confidential details. How we use this

Expressions of concern (EoCs) are intended as interim measures, not as a permanent endpoint. COPE recommends that EoCs be replaced by either a correction or a retraction once the underlying investigation concludes; in practice many EoCs remain unresolved for years because institutional processes stall or are not transparently reported back to journals. Like retractions, EoCs are indexed in CrossRef and PubMed and should be linked bidirectionally to the original article.

References

COPE Retraction Guidelines (2019)
ICMJE Recommendations on corrections, retractions, and expressions of concern (current edition)

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Expression of concern"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/expression-of-concern" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/expression-of-concern",
  "name": "Expression of concern",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/expression-of-concern",
  "description": "A formal post-publication notice issued by a journal to alert readers to substantive concerns about a published article when the journal cannot yet conclude that retraction or correction is the appropriate outcome. An expression of concern is appropriate when concerns are credible but unresolved, often pending an institutional investigation.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/expression-of-concern",
  "sameAs": [
    "EoC",
    "editorial expression of concern"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:52",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Expression of concern

Ask about Expression of concern

Worked examples

Looks similar, but isn't

References

Use in your systems