Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawals

Purpose and Scope

The SDEWES Journals Corrections, Retractions and Withdrawals Policy sets out the principles and procedures for correcting, updating, retracting, withdrawing or, in exceptional circumstances, removing or republishing scholarly content processed or published by journals published by SDEWES Centre.

This policy supports the accuracy, integrity, transparency, accessibility and permanence of the scholarly record while allowing proportionate action where errors, omissions, unreliable findings, ethical concerns, legal concerns or publication-process problems are identified.

This policy applies to all submitted, accepted and published manuscripts, including regular articles, review articles, special issue papers, article collections, conference-linked submissions and supplementary materials. It also applies to associated datasets, notices, article metadata and publicly available pre-Version-of-Record content.

It applies to authors, reviewers, Editors-in-Chief, Associate Editors, Guest Editors, Editorial Board members, SDEWES Centre staff or representatives involved in editorial or publication activities, and other individuals participating in the editorial, peer-review, production or publication process.

In this policy, the responsible editor means the Editor-in-Chief or another editor authorised by the journal to assess the matter and determine the appropriate editorial action, provided that the person has no relevant competing interest.

Related guidance, statement templates, declaration forms and checklists relevant to this policy are listed in Appendix A: Related COPE and International Guidance and Appendix B: Practical Forms, Statements and Checklists.

General Principles

SDEWES journals are committed to maintaining the scholarly record as accurate, transparent, accessible and complete as reasonably possible.

Corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, withdrawals and related notices are mechanisms for maintaining and correcting the scholarly record. They are not intended as punitive measures against authors, reviewers or editors.

The appropriate action depends on the nature, severity, effect and timing of the concern, including:

whether the content has been published as the Version of Record;
whether the findings or conclusions remain reliable;
whether the problem can be corrected without misleading readers;
whether the concern involves honest error, possible misconduct, an institutional finding or another integrity issue;
whether legal, privacy, safety, security or ethical considerations apply; and
whether readers require an immediate alert while the matter is assessed.

No correction, expression of concern or retraction should be issued solely as a punishment or in response to pressure from an author, complainant, institution, sponsor or another interested party.

The age of an article does not by itself determine whether action should be taken. The decision should be based on the reliability and integrity of the scholarly record and the evidence reasonably available.

Where possible, the original published record should remain available with a clear and permanently accessible notice explaining the action taken. Removal should occur only in exceptional circumstances.

Editorial action must be determined independently in accordance with Editorial Independence.

Corrections

A correction may be issued where a published article contains an error, omission or inaccuracy that requires amendment for accuracy, transparency, interpretation, indexing or discoverability, but the article’s principal findings and conclusions remain substantially reliable.

Corrections may address:

errors or omissions in text, data, calculations, figures, tables, equations or references;
incorrect or incomplete author, affiliation or metadata information;
funding, competing-interest, ethics or Data Availability Statements;
supplementary materials;
production or publisher errors; or
another matter that can be corrected without replacing the work or materially changing its central findings.

A substantive correction must be accompanied by a formal correction notice identifying the article, the affected content and the corrected information.

Minor typographical, formatting or production errors may be corrected without a formal notice only where they do not affect meaning, interpretation, metadata, indexing, attribution or discoverability. Silent changes must not be used for substantive amendments.

A correction must not be used to introduce a substantially new analysis, replace the study with newly generated evidence or rewrite conclusions that are no longer supported by the work as originally conducted. Where the required changes materially alter the findings or conclusions, retraction or retraction with replacement should be considered.

Where a correction affects authorship, author order, corresponding authorship or author identity, the request must also be handled under Authorship Changes and Inclusive Name Changes.

Expressions of Concern and Editorial Notes

An expression of concern may be issued where there are serious concerns about the reliability, integrity or ethical status of a published article, but:

the available evidence is inconclusive;
an assessment or institutional process is ongoing;
necessary information cannot yet be obtained;
the responsible organisation has not responded within a reasonable period; or
a final decision is likely to be substantially delayed and readers should be alerted in the interim.

An expression of concern should not be used where the matter is minor, has already been resolved or can be addressed adequately through a correction.

The notice must:

identify and link to the affected article;
describe the nature and basis of the concern factually;
identify the journal or editor issuing it;
avoid unsupported allegations and unnecessary personal information;
be freely accessible;
state, where appropriate, that further assessment is ongoing; and
be reviewed and updated when additional information becomes available.

Where a final decision is reached, the expression of concern should be updated, withdrawn, or superseded by a correction, retraction or other appropriate notice. Where a retraction follows, the retraction notice should state that it supersedes the expression of concern.

An editorial note may be used for a transparent administrative or contextual update that does not constitute a correction, expression of concern or retraction. It must not be used as a less visible substitute where one of those formal actions is required.

Retractions

A retraction should be issued where the responsible editor no longer has confidence in the reliability or integrity of the article’s findings or conclusions, or where the article cannot properly remain in the scholarly record as published because of a serious ethical, legal or publication-process problem.

Retraction may be appropriate where:

findings are unreliable because of major error, miscalculation, methodological failure, data irregularity, fabricated or unavailable data, falsification, or inappropriate manipulation of data or images;
plagiarism, substantial unattributed overlap, duplicate or redundant publication materially affects the article;
material or data were published without the necessary authorisation and removal of that material would materially affect the findings or conclusions;
the research involved a serious breach of required ethics approval, consent, permits, legal authorisation or participant protection;
there is a serious privacy, confidentiality, copyright, licensing, defamatory or other legal concern that cannot be resolved adequately through correction or removal of limited material;
peer review or the publication process was compromised through fabricated identities, manipulation, inappropriate coordination, systematic misconduct or another serious integrity breach;
authorship or identity was fabricated, stolen, sold or otherwise seriously misrepresented;
an undisclosed competing interest, funding relationship or editorial-role interest could materially bias interpretation of the article or the review and decision-making process;
generative AI or AI-assisted technologies were used in a manner that materially undermines the reliability or integrity of the article; or
critical data, methods or source material on which the article depends are shown to be unreliable and reassessment demonstrates that the article’s own findings or conclusions can no longer be trusted.

Retraction is not normally appropriate solely because:

an author requests it;
authors disagree about authorship or author order while the findings remain reliable;
an institution does not respond or its investigation is delayed;
the article is old;
an author changes affiliation, employment or opinion; or
the article cites a source that was subsequently retracted, unless that source materially undermines the reliability of the article itself.

A retraction does not automatically imply misconduct by every author. The notice should distinguish between honest error, unresolved reliability concerns, findings by a competent organisation and confirmed misconduct where the evidence permits.

The journal should not make or publish a finding of misconduct beyond the available evidence. Where a formal finding was made by an institution, court or competent body, the notice should attribute the finding to that body.

Partial retractions should normally be avoided because they may leave the status and reliability of different parts of the article unclear. Where a discrete problem can be corrected without undermining the article, a correction should be used. Where the reliable and unreliable parts cannot be clearly separated, the article should normally be retracted in full.

Withdrawals Before Publication

A manuscript may be withdrawn before publication at the authors’ request. The corresponding author coordinates the request, but all authors should normally be informed and agree to the withdrawal.

A withdrawal request should identify the journal, manuscript title, manuscript ID, current publication stage, reason for withdrawal and the authors’ agreement or any reason why full agreement cannot be obtained.

Authors must not assume that a manuscript has been withdrawn until the journal confirms the withdrawal.

Withdrawal does not prevent the journal from retaining editorial, peer-review and ethics-case records in accordance with applicable requirements.

Withdrawal must not be used to avoid assessment of suspected duplicate submission, authorship manipulation, peer-review manipulation, data-integrity concerns, research-ethics non-compliance, legal concerns or another possible integrity breach. The journal may continue to assess such concerns after withdrawal under Publishing Ethics and the relevant specialised policies.

Where an accepted, in-press, early online or other pre-Version-of-Record version has already been made publicly available, it must be treated as part of the public scholarly record. Withdrawal should be limited to justified circumstances, and a public withdrawal notice should normally remain available and be linked to the withdrawn content or its metadata record.

Once the Version of Record has been published, the matter must be handled through correction, expression of concern, retraction, removal or another post-publication action rather than manuscript withdrawal.

Retraction with Replacement, Retraction with Removal, Republication and Batch Retractions

Retraction with replacement may be considered where an article contains serious errors that, when corrected, significantly change the findings but do not invalidate the underlying scholarship or methods. The retracted article and replacement article must be clearly linked and distinguishable, and the publication history and corrections must remain transparent. Where the journal retracts an article and concurrently publishes a corrected article, the original article must remain identifiable and linked to the new publication. The two publications should normally have different persistent identifiers.

Copies showing the original errors and the corresponding corrections may be provided as supplementary material to the retracted and replacement article where appropriate.

Republication of reliable content from a retracted article may be considered where some content remains scientifically valid. Authors must disclose the earlier retraction, cite it where appropriate and explain what material has been omitted, corrected or reused.

Retraction with removal may be necessary in rare cases where leaving some or all content publicly accessible would create an unacceptable legal, privacy, safety, security or environmental risk. The metadata and a removal notice should normally remain available, explaining the removal as far as legally and ethically possible.

Batch retractions may be considered where reliable evidence shows that multiple articles are affected by the same systematic manipulation or publication-process problem. Each affected article must remain individually identifiable, and the notice must explain the basis for its inclusion.

Where only the peer-review process appears to have been compromised and there is no evidence that the article’s content is unreliable, the journal may consider independent re-review or another appropriate remedial process. Such a process must not create unnecessary delay in addressing the wider systematic concern.

Requests, Concerns and Initial Assessment

Requests or concerns may be raised by authors, readers, reviewers, editors, institutions, funders, repositories, indexing services, SDEWES Centre or other parties.

Concerns should be assessed according to their substance and supporting information rather than solely according to the identity, status or motivation of the person raising them. Anonymous concerns may be assessed where they provide sufficiently specific and credible information.

The journal should first determine whether the matter appears to require:

no formal action;
a correction;
an editorial note;
an expression of concern;
a retraction;
withdrawal of public pre-Version-of-Record content;
retraction with replacement;
retraction with removal;
republication of reliable content from a retracted article;
a batch retraction;
institutional or legal clarification; or
assessment under another SDEWES Journals Policy.

The journal may request proportionate information reasonably necessary for the assessment, including data, code, source files, ethics approvals, consent records, authorship documentation, declarations, peer-review records, permissions, licences, repository information or institutional confirmation.

Requests must avoid unnecessary personal, confidential, proprietary or security-sensitive information. Relevant records must be handled under Privacy.

A missing document, unanswered request or allegation does not by itself establish misconduct. The responsible editor must consider the reliability of the available evidence and the effect of the unresolved matter on the scholarly record.

Where the concern affects published or publicly available content, the Post-Publication Amendment Checklist for Editors listed in Appendix B should be used to document the initial classification, applicable policies, evidence considered and recommended action. Ordinary author-initiated withdrawal requests made before public availability should be documented using the Manuscript Withdrawal Request Form.

Depending on the nature of the concern, assessment may also be required under Publishing Ethics, Research Ethics, Research Data and Transparency, Privacy, Copyright & Licensing, Authorship and Contributorship, Authorship Changes and Inclusive Name Changes, Peer Review Policy, Competing Interests and Funding Disclosure or Generative AI Policy.

Decision-Making, Timeliness and Independent Handling

The responsible editor determines the appropriate editorial action. Scientific and editorial decisions must remain independent under Editorial Independence.

The responsible editor may obtain advice from appropriately qualified independent editors, reviewers, subject experts, research-integrity advisers, legal advisers, institutions, repositories, data owners or other relevant parties.

Authors should normally be informed of the concern and given a reasonable opportunity to respond. Author agreement is not required where the responsible editor determines that action is necessary to protect readers or the scholarly record. Failure of an author to respond must not prevent justified action.

A journal may seek institutional clarification but is not required to wait indefinitely for an institutional investigation or to adopt an institution’s conclusion automatically. The journal remains responsible for determining whether its own publication record is reliable.

Concerns should be handled as promptly as reasonably possible while allowing fair assessment and necessary communication. Once the responsible editor is satisfied that retraction is required, the notice should be issued without unnecessary delay. Where a final outcome is delayed and readers may be affected, an expression of concern should be considered.

The age of the article must not be used as the sole reason to decline assessment or corrective action.

Where the responsible editor has an actual, potential or perceived competing interest, the interest must be managed under Competing Interests and Funding Disclosure, and independent handling must be arranged under Editorial Independence.

Notices, Article Labelling, Metadata and Indexing

Correction notices, expressions of concern, retraction notices, withdrawal notices and removal notices must be:

clearly and unambiguously identified;
permanently and freely accessible;
linked to the affected article or manuscript record;
linked bidirectionally where technically possible;
factual, neutral and sufficiently informative;
dated and attributed to the journal, editor or other issuing party;
free from unsupported allegations, defamatory wording and unnecessary personal information; and
reflected in relevant article metadata.

A notice should normally identify:

the notice type;
article title and authors;
journal and publication details;
DOI or other persistent identifier;
the reason and evidential basis for the action;
who is issuing the notice;
whether the authors agreed, disagreed or did not respond, where relevant;
for a retraction, whether the action is a standard retraction, retraction with replacement or retraction with removal;
any institutional or competent-body finding relied upon; and
the relationship to any earlier expression of concern or notice.

A retraction notice should normally relate to one article. Where a batch retraction notice is used, every affected article, author list and persistent identifier must be clearly identified, and the notice must explain the common basis for the batch action.

A retracted article should remain accessible unless removal is necessary. Its status must be unmistakable on the article webpage, PDF, HTML, table of contents and other journal-controlled displays. Where technically feasible:

the title should be prefixed with Retracted:;
all article versions should be marked or watermarked RETRACTED; and
the retraction notice should appear prominently with the article.

Corrections, expressions of concern and retractions must not be hidden behind a paywall. Substantive changes must not be made silently.

SDEWES Centre should update DOI metadata, article metadata and relevant journal records and should communicate the status to indexing, abstracting and discovery services where possible.

Author Responsibilities and Cooperation

Authors must notify the journal promptly where they identify a material error, omission, unreliable finding, inaccurate declaration or other issue that may require amendment of the scholarly record.

Authors must cooperate with proportionate requests for relevant explanations, data, code, records, declarations, approvals, permissions or other supporting information.

The corresponding author coordinates communication with the journal but does not assume sole responsibility for information held or provided by other authors.

Authors must not provide false or misleading information or conceal evidence relevant to the assessment. Obstruction, intimidation, retaliation or other inappropriate conduct is assessed under Publishing Ethics.

Publisher Responsibilities and Preservation of the Scholarly Record

SDEWES Centre supports journal editors in maintaining the integrity, transparency and permanence of the scholarly record.

SDEWES Centre may assist with publication of notices, metadata updates, website updates, communication with authors or institutions, indexing corrections, legal review and preservation of publication records.

SDEWES Centre may take or coordinate necessary technical, legal, privacy, safety or security measures, including temporary restriction or removal of content, while preserving independent editorial assessment wherever possible. Such action must be documented and must not be used to influence the scientific or editorial conclusion.

Notices, original article versions, amended files, metadata records and relevant decision documentation should be preserved so that the publication history remains understandable and auditable.

Records related to corrections, retractions, withdrawals and publication-ethics concerns should be retained in accordance with journal procedures, legal requirements and privacy obligations.

Appeals and Complaints

Authors or other affected parties may raise a complaint or request procedural review concerning the process or outcome of a correction, expression of concern, retraction, withdrawal, retraction with replacement, retraction with removal or other action under Editorial Decision Appeals and Complaints.

An appeal or complaint must identify the alleged factual, procedural or policy problem and provide relevant supporting information.

Submission of an appeal or complaint does not automatically suspend an action required to protect readers, the scholarly record or applicable legal and ethical obligations. The responsible editor may temporarily pause implementation where this is appropriate and does not create an unacceptable risk.

An appeal must be handled independently where the original decision-maker is directly involved or has a relevant competing interest.

Policy Review and Updates

SDEWES Centre may review and update this policy periodically to reflect developments in publication ethics, post-publication correction practices, retraction standards, indexing standards, metadata standards, legal requirements, privacy, copyright, open science and international guidance.

Updated policies apply from the date of publication on the SDEWES Journals Policies website unless otherwise stated.

Appendix A. Related COPE and International Guidance

COPE Council. COPE Guidelines: Retraction Guidelines

Provides current guidance on grounds for retraction, circumstances where retraction is not appropriate, retraction with replacement, retraction with removal, republication of reliable content, batch retractions, timing, article labelling and notice content.

COPE Council. COPE Guidelines - Expressions of concern

Provides guidance on when an expression of concern should or should not be issued, notice content, timing, accessibility and subsequent updating or replacement.

COPE Council. Visibility of corrections and retractions

Provides principles for prominent, freely accessible and linked notices and for avoiding hidden or unclear changes to the scholarly record.

NISO RP-45-2024: Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC) recommended practice

Relevant to standardised, permanent, accessible and indexable communication of retractions, removals, expressions of concern and related notices.

COPE Council. Timescales for handling retractions

Supports timely assessment and prompt retraction once the responsible editor is satisfied that the article is seriously unreliable.

COPE Council. Handling retractions and expressions of concern for old articles

Confirms that article age alone is not a reason to avoid appropriate correction of the scholarly record.

COPE Council. COPE Guidelines: Cooperation between research institutions and journals on research integrity and publication misconduct cases.

Provides guidance where clarification or investigation requires cooperation between the journal, publisher and an institution or research organisation.

Appendix B. Practical Forms, Statements and Checklists

The documents below provide practical support for requesting, assessing, documenting, communicating and implementing corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, withdrawals, retraction with replacement, retraction with removal, republication of reliable content, batch retractions and other post-publication actions.

Correction Request and Correction Notice Template

Author and editorial guidance template – Used to request, assess and prepare a correction where an error, omission, metadata issue or declaration requires amendment but the article’s principal findings and conclusions remain substantially reliable.

Expression of Concern Assessment and Notice Template

Internal editor and notice template – Used by the responsible editor and, where appropriate, SDEWES Centre where serious concerns remain unresolved or inconclusive, an assessment is ongoing, or readers require an interim alert before a final outcome is available.

Retraction Assessment and Retraction Notice Template

Internal editor and notice template – Used by the responsible editor and, where appropriate, SDEWES Centre to assess grounds for retraction, retraction with replacement, retraction with removal, republication of reliable content or batch retraction and to prepare a factual, accessible and appropriately linked notice.

Manuscript Withdrawal Request Form

Author request form – Used to request withdrawal before publication of the Version of Record, document the reason and author agreement, and confirm that withdrawal does not prevent continued assessment of previously identified ethical, legal or integrity concerns.

Post-Publication Amendment Checklist for Editors

Internal editor and publisher checklist – Used to classify a post-publication issue, identify the relevant specialised policies, assess available evidence and determine whether correction, editorial note, expression of concern, retraction, retraction with replacement, retraction with removal, republication of reliable content, batch retraction or no formal action is appropriate.