In principle, the journal does not make corrections or retractions on published articles. Articles published online or in print are considered the final and complete version. However, in case of the situations described below, corrections or retractions may be carried out if truly necessary.
2. Corrections
If there appears to be an unintended scientific mistake in the article which would not lead to significant impacts on the results and conclusion, the editorial office will publish corrections in the journal as soon as possible, detailing the changes made to the original article. If necessary, the journal will release the corrected new version of the article, and specify the changes to the original article and the date of update. In addition, the superseded version will also be archived. Readers can obtain it directly, but only the latest version of the article should be used for citation.
3. Retraction
In the following cases, the editorial office would retract published articles and issue retraction statements:
(1) If an article is found to have severe scientific errors making the results and conclusion of the article unreliable;
(2) For article suspected of academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and data falsification, the editorial office will initiate an investigation and issue a statement to inform readers of the risks associated with the article. Once the investigation is completed, the result will be made public. If the academic misconduct is confirmed, the article will be immediately retracted and a retraction statement will be issued by the editorial office.
4. Retraction process
For manuscripts that are confirmed to have academic misconduct after review, the editorial department will take the following actions:
(1) After the investigation process is completed, the editorial department will inform the author of the results.
(2) The author submits a withdrawal application to the editorial department, stating the content of the withdrawal and the reasons for the withdrawal. All signed authors shall personally sign and the first or corresponding author’s unit shall stamp.
(3) The editorial department issued a withdrawal statement in the latest issue of the journal.
(4) The official website of the journal has revoked the digital version of the literature and requested that databases such as CNKI offline the digital version of the literature.
(5) Depending on the severity of the situation, relevant authors and units may be included in the monitoring list of this journal (new submissions will be subject to key review), or even blacklisted (notice of public censure rejection).
(6) The generated layout fees will not be refunded.
