Corrections and Retraction Policy

Article Withdrawal

Either the Publisher or the author of the article can withdraw the same. An article can be withdrawn at any point in time before it is formally published online in its final form with complete information about volume, issue, page numbers, DOI and article ID. If the article withdrawal request has been initiated by an author, they need to submit a signed letter to the Editorial Office prior to article withdrawal. Publisher can withdraw an article if it is found to violate the ethical publishing guidelines, like Duplicate publication, Plagiarism, Fraudulent usage of data, Multiple submissions, Bogus claims of authorship. In both the cases, the article PDF will be removed and a note that the article has been withdrawn will be displayed.

Corrections to an Article

If an error is discovered in an already published article, Erratum, Corrigendum or Addendum will be published in an issue once the proposed changes are in agreement with Publisher and Author. Only significant corrections will be published such as, inaccurately published information, etc. Minor corrections like spelling mistakes or grammatical errors which do not alter the understanding of the paper will not be corrected. When a correction is published, the original article reference will be given in the corrected PDF and vice-versa. Only the corrections will be mentioned. Charges will be decided while corrections are made depending on the number of corrections etc.

Original article will not be modified, but correction link will be available on the article page. This will help readers to download both the PDFs.

An Errata will be published only when mistakes are recognized in the published article which went unnoticed during Editing and Layout setting in Figures, Tables, etc.

Corrigenda is published when authors realise that errors in the published article could affect the validity of the scientific content, or its accuracy. If a reader detects an error in a published article, they can submit the same as a letter to the editor. The author, editor and a reviewer would then assess the validity of the error pointed out. Corrigenda will then be published with reference to the letter and the answers provided by the author.

Addenda is published if authors have omitted a significant information inadvertently during manuscript submission and would like to add this content to the article after publication. The information provided for addendum will undergo peer-review prior to editorial acceptance.

Addendum publication is very rare and will be allowed by Editorial team only if the information is very much essential to understand a significant portion of the published article.

Article Retractions

Retractions are published in circumstances like, if the conclusion of a paper is found to be based on faulty logic or computation by new information made available after the paper has been published; if the paper is based on falsified or fabricated data, if plagiarized data has been published or if duplicate publications exist. The retractions are decided on a case by case basis by the editor in consultation with the authors and the reviewers of the article. A signed statement from the authors will be required to be submitted to the Editorial Office before an article can be retracted. Agreement of all authors of a paper is required before a retraction can be published. If some co-authors do not agree to the retraction of the article, the retraction will be published as decided by the editor, clearly identifying the dissenting co-authors. When a retraction is published it will be linked to the article being corrected and a link to the retractions page will also be placed on the article published earlier. On the webpages of the retracted article the bibliographic information will be retained on all the pages, however, the article text will be replaced by a note stating that the article has been retracted from the journal. The PDF version of the article will be retained to preserve the integrity of record, but will be marked to show that the article has been retracted. In cases of partial retractions, the retraction notice will be labeled as 'Partial Retraction' or 'Retraction in Part'.

Article Removal

In exceptional circumstances an article may be removed from the journal. This may happen if any legal issues arise or are expected to arise in context of the article, the distribution of the article is stopped by an court order, the contents of the article may pose a serious health risk if acted upon by others, the article violates copyright of others, or if the article is found to be defamatory or infringing on other's legal rights. When an article is removed from the journal the bibliographic information and the PDF file will also be removed. The article text will be replaced by a note stating that the article has been removed from the journal and the reason for removal.

Article Replacement

If an article is found to contain false or inaccurate data which may pose a serious health risk if acted upon by others, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the article and replace it with a corrected version. In this case, the article will be retracted, following the procedure of retraction of an article, with the difference that a link to the corrected re-published article will be placed on the HTML and PDF versions of the paper and on the page with the retraction notice.