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 mathematical error, or substantial miscalculation;
• Manipulation or inappropriate alteration of experimental data, scientific images, figures, spectra, measurements, or computational outputs;
• Redundant or duplicate publication;
• Plagiarism, manipulated authorship, or other serious publication-ethics violations;
• Research conducted without required ethical approval, laboratory authorization, biosafety clearance, research permits, or other applicable approvals;
• Serious errors in experimental design, calibration, data processing, mathematical modeling, simulation, or computational procedures that invalidate the principal findings; 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 researchers and readers can clearly understand the status of the scientific 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An accepted but unpublished manuscript may be withdrawn in exceptional circumstances, such as duplicate submission, major experimental or analytical errors that invalidate the results, serious ethical concerns, authorship disputes, unauthorized use of scientific data, or substantial problems in the research methodology.

After Publication

Removal of a Version of Record is strongly discouraged and considered only in exceptional circumstances involving legal requirements, privacy or safety concerns, hazardous information, or serious 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 experimental data, laboratory records, calculations, scientific images, computational outputs, research permits, authorship, ethical compliance, 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, mathematical, statistical, or data-presentation errors;
• Incorrect author, affiliation, title, laboratory, institution, or other metadata;
• Errors in equations, units, tables, figures, graphs, captions, experimental parameters, or measurement descriptions that do not invalidate the main findings;
• Minor errors in computational code, simulation settings, calibration information, or methodological descriptions that can be corrected without changing the principal conclusions;
• Missing acknowledgments or funding information;
• Missing or incomplete ethical, data-availability, conflict-of-interest, or research-permit declarations; or
• Other errors requiring transparent clarification without invalidating the study's central scientific 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 scientific meaning generally do not require a formal correction.

Scholarly Record Principle: Amendment notices are intended to correct and clarify the scientific record transparently rather than obscure the publication history of an article.