Retraction, Withdrawal, and Correction (R-W-C) Policy

Research Integrity & Scholarly Record

A retraction may be issued when published findings are considered unreliable, invalid, or seriously compromised by error, misconduct, or major ethical problems.

• Fabrication, falsification, major analytical error, serious statistical error, or substantial miscalculation;
• Redundant or duplicate publication;
• Plagiarism, manipulated authorship, or other serious publication-ethics violations;
• Educational research conducted without required ethical approval, participant consent, institutional authorization, or appropriate safeguards;
• Serious concerns involving student, teacher, parent, or other participant privacy and confidentiality;
• Materially misleading reporting of educational interventions, assessments, learning outcomes, or research data; or
• Manipulation of peer review or other publication processes.

Retraction notices identify the affected article, explain the reason factually and transparently, remain publicly available, and are linked to the original article so that readers, educators, researchers, and institutions can clearly understand the status of the scholarly record.

Withdrawal is generally limited to manuscripts that have not yet become the final Version of Record (VoR).

Before Publication

An accepted but unpublished manuscript may be withdrawn in exceptional circumstances, such as duplicate submission, major errors that invalidate the findings, serious ethical concerns, authorship disputes, unauthorized use of educational data, or participant-protection violations.

After Publication

Removal of a Version of Record is strongly discouraged and considered only in exceptional circumstances involving legal requirements, participant privacy or safety, serious confidentiality concerns, or substantial copyright and intellectual-property violations. A withdrawal or removal notice and relevant bibliographic metadata will normally remain available to preserve transparency in the scholarly record.

An Expression of Concern may be issued when serious questions have been raised about a published article but sufficient evidence for a correction or retraction is not yet available. This may occur while an investigation into research data, educational interventions, ethical approval, participant protection, authorship, or research integrity is ongoing, inconclusive, or delayed. The notice may later be updated or replaced following the outcome of the investigation.

Corrections are published when an error affects the accuracy, interpretation, attribution, or discoverability of an article but does not invalidate its principal findings.

• Minor factual, numerical, statistical, or data-presentation errors;
• Incorrect author, affiliation, title, educational institution, or other metadata;
• Errors in tables, figures, learning-outcome data, questionnaire descriptions, or educational intervention details that do not invalidate the main findings;
• Missing acknowledgments or funding information;
• Missing or incomplete ethical, participant-consent, data-availability, or conflict-of-interest declarations; or
• Other errors requiring transparent clarification without invalidating the study's central conclusions.

Articles already assigned to an issue normally receive a separate correction notice linked to the original publication. Minor typographical changes that do not alter meaning generally do not require a formal correction.

Scholarly Record Principle: Amendment notices are intended to correct and clarify the scholarly record transparently rather than obscure the history of a published article.