Article withdrawal | Elsevier policy
Article retraction
The retraction of an article by its authors or the journal Editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. Articles may be retracted to correct errors that impact the findings reported by an article where they are too extensive in the view of the editors to publish a correction, or due to infringements of Elsevier’s journal policies, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
Journal editors or designated representative(s) (such as members of a journal’s Ethics Committee), in consultation with Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics Center of Expertise, will consider retracting an article where:
They have clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of major error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error), or as a result of fabrication (e.g., of data) or falsification (e.g., image manipulation).
It constitutes plagiarism.
The findings have previously been published elsewhere and the authors have failed to provide proper attribution to previous sources or disclosure to the editor, permission to republish, or justification (i.e. redundant publication).
It contains material or data that the authors were not authorised to publish.
Copyright has been infringed or there is some other serious legal issue (e.g., libel, breach of privacy).
It reports unethical research and/or breaches Elsevier’s publishing ethics policies regarding the conduct of research involving human participants and/or animals.
There is evidence of compromised peer-review or systematic manipulation of the editorial process.
There is evidence or material concerns of authorship being sold.
There is evidence of citation manipulation.
The author(s) failed to disclose a major competing interest (a conflict of interest) that, in the view of the editor, would have materially affected interpretations of the work or recommendations by editors and/or peer reviewers.
There is evidence of any other breach of the journal's publishing policies and the editor has therefore lost confidence in the validity or integrity of the article.
Standards for retracting articles have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and the following best practice is used by Elsevier:
A retraction notice titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the editor and, if appropriate, by the authors is published in a subsequent issue of the journal, is paginated and is listed in the table of contents.
In the electronic version, a link is made between the retraction notice and the original article.
The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
The original article is retained unchanged except for a watermark on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
The HTML version of the article is removed.