Global Journals Policy on Article Withdrawal
It is a common standard of scholarly communication that the editor of a learned journal is solely and independently responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal shall be published. In making this decision the Editorial Board is guided by policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright violation and plagiarism.
An outcome of this principle is the significance of the scholarly archive as a permanent, historic record of the transactions of scholarship. Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unchanged as far as is possible. However, very occasionally situation may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted or even removed. Such proceedings must not be undertaken lightly and can only occur under exceptional circumstances, such as
- Article Withdrawal:
Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been by chance submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like.
- Article Retraction:
Infringements of specialized ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, fake claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. - Article Removal:
Legal restrictions upon the publisher, copyright holder or author(s). - Article Replacement:
Identification of bogus or inaccurate data that, if acted upon, would pose a serious health risk.
Article Withdrawal
Articles in Global Journals Press (articles that have been accepted for publication but which have not been officially published and will not yet have the complete volume/issue/page information) that include errors, or are discovered to be unintentional duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors, may be “Withdrawn” from Global Journals. Withdrawn means that the article content (HTML and PDF) is detached and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the Global Journals Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the present policy document.
Article Retraction
The renunciation of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an infrequent feature of the learned world. Standards for dealing with retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this most excellent practice is adopted for article retraction by Global Journals:
- A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is available in the paginated part of a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
- In the electronic edition, a link is made to 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 continue to the article itself.
- The innovative article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the .pdf indicating on each page that it is “retracted.”
- The HTML version of the document is detached.
Article Removal
In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be compulsory to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where the article is clearly insulting, or infringes others’ legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good cause to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose serious losses. In these circumstances, while the metadata (Title and Authors) will be retained, the text will be replaced with a screen indicating the article has been detached for legal reasons.
Article Replacement
In cases where the research paper, if acted upon, might pose serious losses, the authors of the original research paper may wish to take back the faulty original and replace it with a corrected version. In these conditions the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published research paper and a history of the document.
In Summary
Global Journals recognizes the significance of the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record to researchers and librarians and attaches the highest significance to maintaining trust in the authority of its electronic records. This policy has been designed to address these concerns and to take into account present best practice in the scholarly and library communities.
As standards develop and change, we will revisit this issue and welcome the input of scholarly and library communities. We consider these issues require international standards and we will be active in lobbying various information bodies to set up international standards and best practices that the publishing and information industries can adopt
