Errata, corrections and retractions

ERRATA

Errata will be published when an error or omission made by the journal might affect the publication’s record or the reputation of the authors and/or the journal, but when the academic integrity of the article remains intact.

All errors will be accompanied by a separate notification. The notice must provide clear details of the erratum and the changes made to the document.

Errata will apply when:

• The article will be corrected.
• A final note with reference to the notice of errata will be included in the article.
• Errata will be published separately but linked to the corrected version of the article.
• The errata document will be paginated and have a DOI assigned.

WITHDRAWAL OF AN ARTICLE

An article may be withdrawn at any time before it is formally published online in its final form with full information about volume, issue, page numbers, etc. If the article withdrawal request has been initiated by the author, the author must send a signed letter to the Editorial Team prior to article withdrawal. The Editorial Team may withdraw an article if it violates the ethical guidelines for publication, as a result of duplicate publication, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, multiple submissions, false claims of authorship. In both cases, the PDF of the article will be removed and a note that the article has been withdrawn will be displayed.

CORRECTION OF AN ARTICLE

If an error is discovered in an article already published, an erratum will be published afterwards. Only significant corrections (e.g., incorrectly published information) will be published, but minor corrections, such as spelling or grammatical errors that do not alter the understanding of the paper, will not be corrected. When a correction is published, the reference of the original article will be provided in the corrected PDF and vice versa. In any case, only corrections will be mentioned.

The original article will remain unchanged, but the correction link will be available on the article page. This will help readers to download the PDF files. An erratum will be published only when errors are recognized in the published article that went unnoticed during editing and layout in figures, tables, etc.

The correction of the article will be published when the authors realize 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, he or she may send a letter to the Editorial Coordinator. The author, the editor and a reviewer would evaluate the validity of the error reported. The correction of the article will be published with reference to the letter received and the answers provided by the author.

In the event that the authors have inadvertently omitted important information during the submission of the manuscript, an Addendum may be published if they wish to add this content to the article after publication of the article. The information provided for this addendum will undergo external peer review prior to acceptance by the journal. In any case, the publication of an addendum is very rare and the Editorial Team will only allow it if the information is very essential to understand an important part of the already published article.

RETRACTION OF ARTICLES AND EXPRESSIONS OF CONCERN

The journal reserves the right to retract articles that, subsequent to publication, are determined to be unreliable due to unintentional error, scientific fraud or misconduct: fabrication of data, manipulation or appropriation, plagiarism of text and redundant or duplicate publication, omission of references to sources consulted, use of content without permission or without justification, etc. The purpose of the retraction is to correct the scientific publication record and, therefore, to ensure its integrity.

In case there is a conflict regarding duplicate publication caused by simultaneous publication of the same article in two different journals, the date on which the manuscript was received by each journal will be used to decide which of the two versions should be withdrawn.

The journal will publish the notice of retraction in the volume in which the article in question was published and the notice will mention the reasons for the retraction, in order to differentiate between misconduct or unintentional error. The journal will notify the authorities responsible for the authors' institution of the retraction. The decision to retract an article should be reached as soon as possible to prevent other researchers from citing the article without knowing the doubts about its reliability.

The retracted article will remain available in the electronic edition of the journal and will be clearly and unambiguously identified as retracted to distinguish retractions from other corrections or comments.

Prior to the final retraction, the journal may issue an expression of concern providing the necessary information with the same wording as that used for a retraction. The expression of concern will be used for as short a period as possible and will be withdrawn or replaced, if appropriate, by the formal retraction of the article.