The retraction shall comply with the international standards (COPE Retraction Guidelines) and the policy of the journal.

The retraction is an official procedure employed in case of revealed violations of academic integrity, publication ethics or gross errors affecting the reliability of research results.

 

Reasons for retraction:

- the revealed plagiarism or illicit use of other’s results;

- the revealed falsification or fabrication of data;

- the article is a double publication (without required references or consent with editorial offices of other editions);

- the revealed violation of copyright;

- the established fact of an incorrectly defined list of authors: either the inclusion of “fictitious” authors or exclusion of real coauthors;

- the published results contain gross scientific or technical errors making the conclusions distorted or misstated;

- the revealed concealment of facts of using artificial intelligence contrary to the policy of the journal.

 

Procedure initiation

The retraction can be initiated by article author(s), reviewers, readers, members of the editorial board, academic or educational institutions.

 

Consideration and approval of the retraction decision

A request (claim) on retraction shall be submitted on the address of the editorial office in a written form with indicating facts and proofs.

The editor-in-chief shall conduct an initial check of the request jointly with the editorial board. Independent experts can be engaged in case of need. 

The author(s) shall provide a written explanation for consideration of the editorial board (if agreed).

Once the facts are considered and scrutinized, the editorial board shall take one of the following decisions:

- “reject the claim as ungrounded”;

- “correct the article by publishing a correction note”;

- “officially retract the article with a published notice”.

 

Retraction procedure

When the decision on retraction of the article is approved, an official notice on retraction with indicating the reasons shall be published on the journal website and in the respective journal issue. Online version of the article shall be stored in open access unchanged with the mark “retracted”. Information about retraction shall be sent to bibliographic (scientometric) databases. 

 

Notification of the parties and appeal

The author(s) shall receive a written notice about the reasons and consequences of retraction. A claimant, when he/her is not an author, shall receive response about the decision of the editorial board.

The author(s) is(are) entitled for lodging an appeal within 30 days after a retraction notice. The appeal shall be subject to scrutiny by the editor-in-chief and independent experts whose decisions shall be final.

The retracted articles shall remain in storage in the journal archive with relevant marks.