📋 Policy Overview
IJTIMES recognises the importance of the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record and attaches the highest importance to maintaining trust in the authority of its published articles. Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact, and unaltered as far as possible. However, circumstances may arise where an article needs to be corrected, retracted, or removed.
The Editor-in-Chief is solely and independently responsible for deciding which articles are published, guided by the journal's editorial policies and constrained by legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement, and privacy. When the scientific record requires correction, a notice will be permanently linked to the article to ensure transparency for the scientific community.
This policy is reviewed and updated as standards and best practices evolve.
⚠ Authors Who Discover an Error
Authors who discover an error in their published article must contact the journal as soon as possible using the contact details listed on the journal's home page at editor.ijtimes@gmail.com.
In most cases, the corresponding author will be responsible for sharing the details of the error with the journal. The journal Editor or a designated representative will review the proposed correction, together with any accompanying data or information, and may send the proposed correction for further peer review. The Editor will determine the appropriate mechanism to correct the article, and may consult with the IJTIMES Editorial Review Committee before reaching a decision.
📝 Article Correction
A Corrigendum will be published where it is required to correct an error or omission, but the results and conclusions of the article are not impacted by the error.
The Corrigendum should be drafted by the authors but will be subject to review and approval by the Journal Editor. All authors must agree to its publication. The Corrigendum will be permanently linked to the article it corrects.
On rare occasions, IJTIMES may need to correct an error made during the publication process. In such cases, the journal will issue an Erratum to correct the error, which will also be permanently linked to the relevant article.
A correction to the author or contributor list may be posted if the Editor determines that a change is justified when presented with supporting documentation.
📑 Editor's Notes
Editor's Notes may be issued in circumstances that do not warrant a retraction, correction, or expression of concern. They alert readers to elements within a published article that do not impact the results and conclusions, but where the Editor wishes to advise that a degree of caution be exercised when reading the article. For example, an Editor's Note may be warranted if:
- Unethical behaviour within the review process caused the author(s) to make a change or addition they would not otherwise have made (e.g., adding redundant citations), but these changes do not impact the results and conclusions, and there are no other signs of ethical misconduct.
- The final outcome of a resolved concern or complaint does not warrant an expression of concern, correction, or retraction.
- There is an unresolved or unresolvable authorship dispute but no reason to doubt the validity of the article's findings, data, or content.
🚫 Expressions of Concern
An Expression of Concern alerts readers to potential issues that might affect the reliability of parts or all of a published work. The journal Editor or Editorial Review Committee will consider issuing an Expression of Concern if any of the following conditions are met:
- There is inconclusive evidence that the work is potentially unreliable due to error, incorrect analysis, or research or publication misconduct that has not been resolved by an investigation, and which warrants notification to readers.
- An investigation into alleged unreliability or misconduct is believed to be, or would not be, fair, impartial, or conclusive.
- An investigation is underway but a judgment will not be available for a considerable time.
An Expression of Concern becomes part of the permanent record. If the investigation is resolved, the Editor will publish a notice — such as a correction, retraction, or editorial note — explaining the outcome. The original Expression of Concern will not be removed but may be updated.
📄 Article Withdrawal
Early-accepted articles (accepted but not yet published in final form) may only be withdrawn where:
- They represent an early version of an article published prematurely due to an editorial or production error.
- They are discovered to be a duplicate of another published article due to an editorial or production error.
When articles are withdrawn for these reasons, the article content will be removed and replaced with a page stating that the article has been withdrawn according to the IJTIMES Article Withdrawal Policy.
🔒 Article Retraction
Articles may be retracted by their authors or the journal Editor under advice from the scholarly community to correct errors too extensive to address via a correction notice, or due to infringements of IJTIMES journal policies.
The Editor or Editorial Review Committee will consider retracting an article where:
- There is clear evidence the findings are unreliable, due to major error, fabrication (e.g., of data), or falsification (e.g., image manipulation).
- It constitutes plagiarism, including substantial overlap in the view of the Editor.
- The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper attribution, permission, or disclosure (redundant publication).
- It contains material or data the authors were not authorised to publish.
- Copyright has been infringed or there is another serious legal issue (e.g., libel, breach of privacy).
- It reports unethical research or breaches IJTIMES publishing ethics policies, including those on research involving human participants and/or animals.
- There is evidence of compromised peer review or systematic manipulation of the editorial process.
- There is evidence of authorship being sold, identity theft, or fictitious authorship.
- The authorship of the publication cannot be verified.
- There is evidence of citation manipulation.
- The author(s) failed to disclose a major conflict of interest that would have materially affected interpretations of the work.
- There is evidence of any other breach of the journal's publishing policies, including IJTIMES's policies on the use of generative AI and AI-assisted technologies.
Best practice for retracting articles:
- A retraction notice titled "Retraction: [article title]" signed by the Editor, and if appropriate the authors, is published in a subsequent issue of the journal.
- In the electronic version, a link is made between the retraction notice and the original article.
- The original article is retained unchanged except for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is "Retracted."
- The HTML version of the article is removed.
⛔ Article Removal: Legal Limitations
In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online archive. Given the importance of maintaining the scholarly record, removal of an article is rare and will only occur where it is determined that:
- The article is defamatory, or infringes others' legal rights, and retraction is not a sufficient remedy.
- The article is, or IJTIMES has good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order.
- The article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk.
In these circumstances, while the metadata (title and authors) will be retained, the article text will be replaced with a notice indicating the article has been removed for legal reasons.
🔄 Article Replacement
In cases where an article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the original and replace it with a corrected version. In these circumstances, the standard retraction procedures will be followed, with the addition that a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document will be published alongside the retraction notice.
💾 Official Archives
IJTIMES maintains permanent digital archives of all published articles, including retracted or otherwise removed articles. All versions of published content are preserved to support the completeness and integrity of the scholarly record.
For any questions regarding archiving or access to previous versions of published content, please contact the editorial office at editor.ijtimes@gmail.com.