Order of Articles Retraction

1. This document is based on “Procedure of Articles Retraction” of the Association of Science Editors and Publishers (ASEP) and describes the order of eliminating infringements in scientific articles of the Publishers’ academic journals.

2. Text withdrawal from publication (retraction) is a mechanism of published scientific information correction and readers warning that the publication contains serious shortcomings, fallacious data, which can’t be trusted, about the cases of duplicate publications (when authors present one and the same data in several publications), plagiarism and conflict of interests concealment that could influence data interpretation or recommendations on their use.

3. Grounds for articles retraction:

• detection of plagiarism in a publication;

• an article duplication in several editions;

• disclosure of falsification or fabrication in a work (e.g. experimental data manipulation);

• revealing serious mistakes in a publication (e.g. false interpretation of results) that casts doubt on its scientific importance;

• incorrect authors composition (he who is worthy of being an author is absent; persons not meeting the criteria of authorship are included);

• conflict of interests is concealed (and other violations of publication ethics);

• an article republication without the author’s consent.

4. The Publishers carry out retraction by official address of the author / group of authors of an article, who have justified the reason of their decision, and also by the decision of the journal editorial staff on the basis of their own examination or received information.

5. The editorial staff inform the author (the leading author in case of collective authorship) about an article retraction and substantiate its reasons without fail. If the author / group of authors ignore messages, the editorial staff inform the Council on Publication Ethics of the ASEP about it.

6. An article and its description remain on the Internet site of the journal in the corresponding issue, but the inscription RETRACTED and retraction date are stamped on the text electronic version, the same mark is put by the article in the issue table of contents. Retraction reason is stated in the commentary on the article (in case of plagiarism detection – with borrowing sources indication). There is no mechanical removal of the article from the electronic version of the journal and its archive, the texts of retracted articles remain in their place with the corresponding mark.

7. Information about retracted articles is passed to the Council on Publication Ethics of the ASEP (for the information inclusion in the common database of retracted articles) and the Scientific Electronic Library (elibrary.ru) (information about the article and its full text remain on elibrary.ru but are supplemented with information about retraction. Retracted articles and references in them are excluded from the Russian Index of Scientific Citation and don’t take part in indices calculation).

8. Open access fee for retracted articles is not reimbursed.