Theory and Practice of Forensic Science and Criminalistics

Article retraction is the official withdrawal (annulment) of a scientific article that has already been published, including at the author’s initiative. The decision is made by the editorial board in cases where violations of publication ethics and/or other significant shortcomings are identified (such as 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 journal without proper justification; inclusion of authors who did not make a substantial scientific contribution to the research, or exclusion of those who did; detection of an unethical peer-review process; the presence of a conflict of interest that could have influenced or did influence the research results, etc.), which make it impossible to rely on the results of such an article.

The author is obliged to immediately inform the members of the editorial board of the Journal and assist them in eliminating or correcting the error if a significant mistake or inaccuracy is discovered in a work that has already been published. If the editorial board or the advisory board learns from a third party that a published work contains significant errors, the author must immediately provide the editorial office with evidence confirming the correctness of the original data of the scientific article or exercise the right to retract the article and correct the errors in the prescribed manner.

Retraction of articles is not a punishment for authors. According to the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), retraction is a mechanism for correcting a published work and warning readers that it is so flawed or contains such inaccurate data that its conclusions cannot be trusted.

The process of cancelling or correcting published material consists of five key stages:

1. Initiation of the procedure.
A request for retraction may come from: the authors (a voluntary decision of the research team); members of the editorial board; readers, fellow researchers, or other publishers (in particular, when plagiarism or text duplication is detected).

2. Formal submission.
A written request (paper or electronic) must be submitted to the editorial office and should contain: the article details (title, authors); a detailed justification with supporting evidence (references to sources, plagiarism detection reports, screenshots).
If the initiative comes from the authors, the document must be signed by all members of the author team.

3. Stages and timeframes of consideration.
The editorial board conducts an initial review of the request within 30 days. Feedback: the author (co-authors) is given 4 weeks to provide explanations. If necessary, additional reviewers may be involved or a commission may be established. The re-evaluation of the article lasts no longer than 30 days.

4. Decision-making.
Based on the results of the review, the editorial board chooses one of the following options: Retraction (full withdrawal); Erratum / Correction (introduction of corrections); Expression of concern (official statement of concern); refusal (if violations are not confirmed).
The decision must be recorded in a special protocol indicating the composition of the commission and the justification of the conclusions.

5. Publication and consequences.

After the decision is made, the editorial board takes the following measures:
- after retraction, the article remains in the archive of the scientific journal with a clear indication of the fact of its retraction;
- an explanatory notice is published indicating who initiated the process, the reasons, and the responsible person;
- the information is transmitted to all scientometric databases in which the journal is indexed;
- additional sanctions: the editorial board reserves the right to temporarily restrict the author’s ability to publish in this journal in the future.