General Provisions

1. Retraction of a scholarly article is a mechanism for correcting published information and notifying readers that a published article contains serious flaws or erroneous data that cannot be relied upon. The unreliability of data may result from either unintentional error or deliberate misconduct.

2. Retraction is also used to alert readers to cases of duplicate publication (when the same data are presented in multiple publications), plagiarism, and undisclosed conflicts of interest that may have affected the interpretation of data or recommendations for their use.

3. The primary purpose of retraction is to correct published information and ensure its integrity, rather than to punish authors who have committed violations.

Grounds and Reasons for Retraction

The grounds for retracting an article are violations of the journal’s ethical principles.

These include:

• substantial instances of improper borrowing (plagiarism);
• duplicate publication of the same article in multiple journals;
• detection of fabrication or falsification (e.g., manipulation of research data);
• identification of serious errors (e.g., incorrect interpretation of results) that call into question the scholarly value of the work;
• inappropriate authorship (inclusion of individuals who do not meet authorship criteria or exclusion of those who do);
• undisclosed conflicts of interest (and other violations of publication ethics);
• republication of an article without the author’s consent;
• other violations of the journal’s ethical standards.

Reasons for initiating retraction include:

• a request from the author;
• a submission by the Editor-in-Chief.

Retraction Procedure

1. The decision to retract an article is made by the Editorial Board upon the submission of the Editor-in-Chief. Such submission must include information confirming the existence of grounds for retraction as specified in these rules. The decision is taken with due consideration of the author’s response substantiating their position regarding the proposed retraction (if such a response is received).

2. If an author or a group of authors considers it necessary to retract an article, they must contact the editorial office with a reasoned explanation. The editorial office responds to the authors and, if grounds for retraction are confirmed, independently proceeds with the retraction of the article.

3. If the editorial office decides to retract an article based on its own assessment or information received, the author(s) are informed and invited to provide their position regarding the Editor-in-Chief’s submission. If the author(s) fail to respond, the editorial office reserves the right to обратиться to the council on publication ethics and/or proceed with retraction without the author’s input.

4. The decision to retract an article is formalized in the minutes of the Editorial Board meeting.

5. Upon deciding to retract an article, the editorial office specifies the reason for retraction (in cases of plagiarism – with reference to the source) and the date of retraction. The article and its description remain on the journal’s website within the relevant issue; however, the electronic version of the text is clearly marked “RETRACTED” along with the retraction date. The same indication is added to the article and to the table of contents of the issue.

6. The Editor-in-Chief submits to the council on publication ethics the minutes of the Editorial Board meeting, including the date of the meeting, the list of participants, the results of the evaluation, the reasoned decision, and the completed form containing:

• author’s full name and title of the article;
• title of the journal from which the article is retracted;
• initiator of the retraction;
• grounds for retraction and date of decision;
• link to the webpage where retraction information is published;
• bibliographic details of the article and DOI;
• subject area of the article.

7. The author (or lead author in the case of multiple authorship) is provided with the minutes of the Editorial Board meeting, including the justification for the retraction.

8. Simultaneously with the decision to retract an article, the Editorial Board may impose a temporary ban on accepting new submissions from the author of the retracted article.

9. Information about the retraction is published on the journal’s website.