Consortium Publisher understands the value of the scholarly published articles. Therefore, we follow the guidelines of the researchers and librarians to maintaining a trusted electronic archive. Generally, the editors of journals are independently responsible for the decision of which articles should be accepted for publication. To rationalize the decisions, the editor are supported by policies of the editorial board and regulated by standard requirements. An outcome of this procedure is important to assure quality archive. Though, some time unavoidable special situation may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted, corrected, replaced or even removed. Such cases are handled seriously and undertaken critically. These cases only occur under special and exceptional circumstances. In all cases, our archives will retain all article versions, including retracted or otherwise removed articles.

Consortium Publisher has designed this policy to address the concerns and implement the best practice in the scholarly communities.  We believe these current problems demand the international quality standards. Thus, we recommend the National Library of Medicine's policy on retractions and the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) to resolve the concerns regarding the correction/ retraction/ replacement of the articles.

Article withdrawal

Article withdrawal is only used for “Articles in Press”. These manuscripts represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been submitted multiple times accidentally. But the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes (i.e. plagiarism, bogus claims of authorship, multiple submission, fraudulent use of data etc). The manuscripts which are not yet been published but in-process to be uploaded into the journal’s website that include errors, or are discovered to be accidental duplicates of other published article(s), or are determined to violate our journal publishing ethics guidelines in the view of the editors. Such articles may be “Withdrawn”. The article content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with a HTML page and PDF simply stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the Consortium Policy on Article in Press Withdrawal with a link to the current policy document.

Article retraction

A retraction shall be issued when there is clear and conclusive evidence of,

• Data fabrication
• Double publication
• Severe plagiarism
• Copyright infringement
• Unethical research practices
• Unreliable findings
• Data recycling in a purportedly original research article
• Practice/ act potentially harmful to the scientific community

Thus, the infringement of professional ethical codes (i.e. plagiarism, bogus claims of authorship, multiple submission, fraudulent use of data etc) a retraction will be used to correct the errors in submission or publication. The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world. We use the standards for dealing with retractions, which have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies. A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor may be published in the electronic version; a link is made to the original article. The original article is retained unchanged indicating on each page that it is “retracted.” The HTML version of the document is removed if needed.

Article removal: legal limitations

This is an extremely limited number of cases. But it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database to address the problem appropriately. This serious action is only taken when the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others’ legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk. 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 removed because of certain legal, ethical and/ or scientific reasons.

Article replacement

Some time the article may pose a serious health hazard and potential risk for patients. The authors of the original article may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In such situation the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice may publish a link to the corrected re-published article along with history of the article.

Erratum

An Erratum may be issued by an editor when it is determined that a mistake in a chapter originates from the production process handled by the publisher. A published Erratum will adhere to the retraction notice publishing guidelines.

Corrigendum

A Corrigendum may also be issued by an editor when it is determined that a mistake in a chapter is a result of an author’s miscalculation or oversight. A published Corrigendum will adhere to the retraction notice publishing guidelines.