PLOS One Issues Expression of Concern Over China Electricity Consumption Paper

PLOS One has issued an Expression of Concern regarding a 2023 paper that examined the allometric growth relationship between electricity consumption and economic development in China.

According to the editorial notice, the article was identified as one of a series of submissions for which the journal has concerns about the integrity and reliability of the peer review process. The Editors stated that readers are advised to interpret the article with consideration of this issue.

Importantly, the notice clarifies the scope of the journal’s investigation. In following up on the matter, PLOS did not evaluate the article’s integrity or scientific validity. This means the Expression of Concern does not constitute a finding that the paper’s data, methods, or conclusions are flawed; rather, it flags concerns about the peer review process through which the submission was handled.

The Editors also drew a distinction regarding the authors’ own role. The notice states that the Editors do not have concerns regarding the authors’ conduct during the peer review process, indicating that the concerns relate to the review process itself rather than to actions attributed to the authors.

The Expression of Concern carries the citation The PLOS One Editors (2026), published in PLoS One volume 21, issue 10, article e0360880, with the DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0360880. The original article under review is cited as Qi Y, Tang M, Dang D, Qi C, published in PLoS One 2023, volume 18, issue 11, article e0291671.

The notice is published as an open access article under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

In this case, PLOS has advised readers to weigh the flagged peer review concerns when interpreting the paper’s findings, without asserting any conclusion about the article’s scientific content.

Subject of Research: An Expression of Concern issued by PLOS One regarding a paper on the allometric growth relationship between electricity consumption and economics in China.

Article Title: Expression of Concern: The allometric growth relationship between electricity consumption and economics in China

Article References: The PLOS One Editors (2026). Expression of Concern: The allometric growth relationship between electricity consumption and economics in China. PLOS One, 21(10), e0360880. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0360880

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0360880

Keywords: PLOS One, Expression of Concern, peer review, research integrity, electricity consumption, China, economics, allometric growth, editorial notice, open access, Expression, Concern