Even with a thorough review of all submitted manuscripts, the Editorial Board acknowledges the possibility of an objective need to reconsider the status of an article after its publication. Guided by the principles and requirements outlined on the COPE website (https://publicationethics.org/retraction-guidelines), the Editorial Board may initiate a retraction procedure.

The purpose of retraction is to correct published information and ensure the integrity of scholarly publications.

Retraction may be initiated by the authors, the Editorial Board of the Collection, the institution where the authors are affiliated, or representatives of the academic community.

The decision to officially retract a published scientific article is made by the Editorial Board in cases of violations of publication ethics and/or other significant deficiencies (errors, plagiarism or improper borrowing of text, ideas, data, or research results; lack of proper references to primary data sources; duplicate publication of the same article in another outlet; inclusion of authors who did not make a significant scholarly contribution or exclusion of those who did; detection of unethical peer review practices; a conflict of interest that could have influenced or did influence the research results, etc.), which make the reliable use of the article’s findings impossible.

The Editorial Board is obliged to inform the author about the retraction of the article and provide justification for the decision; indexing databases are also notified of the retraction.

If a retraction decision is made, the article is marked as “retracted” in all versions of the Collection. A “Retraction Notice” is published on the Collection’s website, containing bibliographic details and a link to the original article, a detailed justification of the reasons for retraction, and the date the decision comes into effect.

The retracted article remains in the Collection archive with the appropriate marking.