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, methodological failure, data-integrity problems, or misconduct.

• Fabrication, falsification, major analytical error, serious computational error, or material miscalculation;
• Manipulated, fabricated, or unreliable datasets, source code, software outputs, benchmarks, simulations, or experimental results;
• Redundant or duplicate publication;
• Plagiarism, manipulated authorship, or other serious ethical violations;
• Research conducted without required ethical approval or authorization where applicable;
• Manipulation of peer review or other publication processes; or
• Serious errors in algorithms, models, code, cybersecurity analysis, data processing, or computational procedures that invalidate the principal findings.

Retraction notices identify the affected article, explain the reason factually, remain publicly available, and are linked to the original article.

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An accepted but unpublished manuscript may be withdrawn in exceptional circumstances, such as duplicate submission, major errors that invalidate the results, serious coding or data-integrity problems, or significant ethical or authorship violations.

After Publication

Removal of a Version of Record is strongly discouraged and considered only in exceptional circumstances involving legal requirements, privacy or security concerns, serious cybersecurity risks, confidential information, or substantial copyright and intellectual-property violations. A withdrawal notice and relevant bibliographic metadata will normally remain available.

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 include unresolved concerns about datasets, software, source code, computational reproducibility, algorithmic integrity, image or data manipulation, authorship, ethical compliance, or peer-review integrity. The notice may later be updated or replaced following the outcome of the investigation.

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

• Minor factual, numerical, coding, computational, or data-presentation errors;
• Incorrect author, affiliation, title, DOI, or other metadata;
• Errors in equations, algorithms, pseudocode, tables, figures, or software-version information that do not alter the principal findings;
• Missing acknowledgments or funding information;
• Missing links to datasets, software repositories, source code, or supplementary materials where required; or
• Missing or incomplete ethical, data-availability, AI-use, or conflict-of-interest declarations.

Articles already assigned to an issue normally receive a separate correction notice linked to the original publication. Minor typographical, formatting, or coding-presentation changes that do not alter meaning or scientific interpretation generally do not require a formal correction.