Retraction Policy

The journal strongly believes in maintaining and protecting the integrity of the academic record. Manuscripts formally published in the journal are considered as the “Version of Record”. Very rarely, when the scientific information in a manuscript is significantly undermined, it becomes obligatory for the journal to publish corrections to, or retractions of manuscripts published on the journal website, at the discretion of the editor-in-chief.

Article Corrections
Contributors are encouraged to report errors related to the accuracy of published information in their manuscripts. Errors that impact the manuscript considerably will be considered only. Corrections are made at the editor-in-chief’s discretion. The correction procedure is based on the publication stage of the manuscript. Corrections will be published under corrections and addendum in an upcoming issue of the journal.

Article Retractions
The manuscript published in the journal may be retracted due to scientific misconduct in some circumstances such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, fraudulent use of data or plagiarism. Concerned authors are required to submit a signed statement form to the editorial office before a manuscript can be retracted. The retractions are decided on a case by case basis by the editor in consultation with the authors and the reviewers of the manuscript. A retraction notice will be published and linked to the original manuscript being corrected and a link to the retraction page will be placed on the article published earlier.

Article Removal
In extremely exceptional circumstances, it may be mandatory to remove the published manuscript from the journal website. This may happen if the manuscript is found to be defamatory or infringing on other’s legal rights leading to a court order. Under such circumstances, the whole manuscript will be removed and replaced with a screen stating that the manuscript has been removed due to legal reasons.

Article Replacement
If the manuscript is found to include inaccurate data which may pose a serious health risk if acted upon by others, the authors of the original manuscript may wish to retract the manuscript and replace it with a corrected version. In this case, the above procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the manuscript retraction notice will contain a link to the corrected manuscript together with a history of the document.

Article Withdrawal
The manuscript can be withdrawn by the author(s) or the publisher. The manuscript can be withdrawn at any time before it is officially published online. If the authors request withdrawal of their manuscript, a signed withdrawal request letter will be required to reach to the editorial office prior to the withdrawal of the manuscript. The publisher can withdraw the manuscript if it is found to violate the ethical publishing guidelines of the journal such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, multiple submission, fraudulent use of data or bogus claims of authorship.  In such a case, the PDF version of the manuscript will be removed and replaced by a note that the manuscript has been withdrawn formally.