Article withdrawal

It is the policy of Engineered Science publisher that published article should not be amended, altered or removed, in line with the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers' (STM) guidelines:

“Articles that have been published should remain extant, exact and unaltered to the maximum extent possible” (STM Guidelines on Preservation of the Objective Record of Science)

Authors who wish to publish the corrections to their articles or who are seriously concerned that they may retract their published articles should contact the journals' editorial office. Readers who find “errors of consequence” in the article of others should contact the corresponding author of that article. All requests from the authors for corrections and retraction are subject to the editor’s decision. The editor may also request correction or retraction of the published articles to address the scientific and ethical issues after publication.

Engineered Science Publisher follows the guidelines outlined by the Committee of Publishing Ethics (COPE) regarding the ethical concern, correction and withdrawal of the published article.

Correction

Journals will consider issuing correction at the editor’s decision if:

• there is an inaccuracy or misleading in reported scientific results (it should be distinguishable from misconducts relating to the retractions)
• the addition or correction brings new and relevant information.
• the author/contributor list is incorrect (i.e. a deserving author has been omitted or somebody who does not meet authorship criteria has been included).

Journals should work with authors and the publisher to correct published errors. The corresponding author should submit the corrected manuscript along with corrections through the journal’s submission system. The original article should be cited along with DOI in the corrected article. Minor additions and corrections will not be published unless it may affect the contribution in a material way or if the issue does not significantly impair the reader's understanding of the contribution, such as a spelling mistake or grammatical error. The correction will be published online as “Errata” and linked to the original article. The corrections are free to view.

Journals should publish corrections when important errors are found and should consider retraction when errors are so fundamental that they invalidate the work.

Corrections arising from errors within an article should be distinguishable from retractions and statements of concern relating to misconduct.

Corrections should be included in indexing systems and linked to the original article.

Corrections should be free to access.

Expression of concern

An expression of concern may be issued at the editor’s decision if:

• the evidence of authors’ misconduct related to the research or publication is inconclusive;
• there is evidence for unreliable findings, but the authors’ institution will not consider the case;
• an investigation into alleged misconduct related to the publication either has not been or would not be, fair and impartial or conclusive;
• an investigation is underway, but a judgment will not be available for a considerable time.
• Upon completion of any related investigation, and when a final determination is made about the outcome of the article, the Expression of Concern may be replaced with a Retraction notice or Correction.

The expression of concern will be published online, and it is free to view.

Retraction

An article may be considered for its retraction if there exists unambiguous evidence that the articles violate the professional code of ethics such as,

• False claim of authorship, missing authorship, Unclear authorship, Affiliation error and the like.
• Submission of the same article to the different journal after its publication.
• Presence of seriously flawed and erroneous findings that are unreliable, as a result of misconduct (fabrication of data) or honest error (such as a miscalculation, experimental error, unreproducible work or difference in opinions) that invalidate the work.
• Plagiarism (such as submitting the article that describing the published work in a slightly different way, usage of published data without proper permission and the like)
• Reporting unethical research.

Upon retraction, the information on the retraction signed by all the authors will be published and it is free to view. The original article remains online with the digitally marked watermark "RETRACTED" on all pages of the article, except in exceptional cases (e.g. if this is required by law or the availability of the published content possibly cause harm to public health).