Paper retraction policy

The Good practice guide for scientific-academic publishing of Editorial CSIC defines (point 1.5.), since its first version of 2013, the following policy for Journal article retraction and expression of concern:

The Editorial Team reserves the right to retract published articles which are subsequently determined to be unreliable due to unintentional error or scientific fraud or misconduct: data fabrication, manipulation or appropriation, text plagiarism, self-plagiarism and redundant or duplicate publication, omission of references to sources consulted, use of content without permission or without justification, etc. The decision to retract is based on the need to correct the scientific record of publication and thereby ensure its integrity.

In case of a conflict regarding duplicate publication caused by the simultaneous publication of the same article in two different journals, the date by which the manuscript was received by each journal will be used to decide which version/s should be retracted.

If an error affects only part of a published article, it can be subsequently corrected by publishing a note from the editor, a correction or an erratum notice.

If any conflict arises, the journal will ask the author or authors to provide an explanation and relevant evidence for clarification, and will reach a decision based on this information.

The journal must publish the retraction notice in both its print and electronic editions, and the notice must mention the reasons for the retraction, in order to differentiate between misconduct and unintentional error. The journal will notify the responsible authorities at the authors’ institution of the retraction. The decision to retract an article should be reached as soon as possible in order to prevent the misleading article from being cited by other researchers.

Retracted articles will remain available in the electronic edition of the journal, and will be identified clearly and unambiguously as retracted in order to distinguish retractions from other corrections or commentaries. In the print edition, retractions will be reported as promptly as possible as an editorial or note from the editor with the same wording as in the electronic edition.

Prior to final retraction, the journal may issue an expression of concern in which the necessary information is provided with the same wording as used for a retraction. The expression of concern will be used for as brief a period as possible and will be withdrawn or superseded, if appropriate, by formal retraction of the article.

Likewise, in item 2 on Authorship in CSIC scientific articles and books, section 2.5. Significant errors in published works, it is stated that:

When authors discover a serious error in their work, they must report this to the person responsible for the journal or series as soon as possible in order to modify the work, withdraw it, retract it, or publish a correction or erratum notice.

If the Editorial Team detects the potential error, the authors must then demonstrate that their work is free from error.

The process to be used to resolve conflicts that may arise is described above in sections 1.5 and 1.6.