Retractions and Withdrawal Policy

Retractions
An article may be retracted under the following circumstances:

  • There is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, due to misconduct (e.g. fabrication of the data) or an honest error on the part of the author.
  • The findings have previously been published elsewhere (i.e. cases of redundant publication).
  • The findings or reporting of the findings have been plagiarized.
  • The research has not been conducted in accordance with the relevant ethical procedures.
  • The article claims multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data.

Article withdrawal
The article will be withdrawn in the following conditions;

  • Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice.
  • Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.

Expressions of Concern
An Expression of Concern (EoC) may be issued if we are made aware of concerns with a published article, either due to potentially incorrect findings or publication misconduct. We will only issue an EoC if the concerns are well-founded but investigations have proven inconclusive. We will sometimes issue an EoC if investigations are ongoing and likely to take some time to resolve.