Article Retraction Policy

The retraction policy (retraction — the withdrawal of a published article) is implemented by the journal’s editorial board to alert readers to instances of duplicate publication/self-plagiarism (when authors present the same data in multiple publications), plagiarism, the provision of inaccurate data, or the concealment of conflicts of interest that could have influenced the interpretation of the data or recommendations regarding its use.

A retraction is a mechanism for correcting published information and alerting readers to publications containing serious flaws or erroneous data, including those that cannot be trusted. The publication of such data by an author may result from honest error or deliberate misconduct. Based on the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the journal’s editorial board adheres to the following retraction policy for already published articles.

The journal Fundamental and Experimental Biology will retract an article if the editors determine that issues not resolved during discussions with the authors warrant retraction in accordance with the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

The journal Fundamental and Experimental Biology may also retract an article if, after publication, it becomes clear that it does not meet the journal’s key requirements or editorial policy.

We may retract an article regardless of whether the issues arose from unintentional errors or misconduct.

Grounds for retracting an article:

- detection of plagiarism in the publication;

- the discovery of serious errors in the work (e.g., incorrect interpretation of results) that call its scientific value into question;

- duplication of the article (or part thereof) in multiple publications;

- detection of falsification or fabrication in the work (e.g., manipulation of research data);

- incorrect authorship (inclusion of individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship);

- Concealment of a conflict of interest (and other violations of publication ethics);

- republication of the article without the consent of the author(s).

The grounds for initiating the article retraction process may include:

- a request from the article’s author;

- a request from the editorial board of another journal where the article or part of it was published;

- a request from third parties (possibly parties involved in a conflict of interest) providing evidence of violations of scientific ethics by the author of the article published in the journal;

- a request from third-party organizations and institutions;

- the editorial board’s discovery of evidence of violations of scientific ethics by the article’s authors.

In accordance with the recommendations of the Committee on Research Integrity, “Fundamental and Experimental Biology” does not pass judgment on intentions or individual responsibility for the issues raised and does not publish partial retractions.

Upon retraction of an article, “Fundamental and Experimental Biology” publishes a retraction notice explaining the reason for the retraction. The notice is placed at the top of the “Fundamental and Experimental Biology” page dedicated to the retracted article and contains a link to information about the article’s publication.

Procedure for retracting articles in the journal:

  1. Upon receiving a request from the author or another individual/organization/institution that has provided evidence of a violation of scientific ethics in the article, the journal’s editorial board appoints a committee to investigate the case, taking into account all available facts and the possibilities for verifying the ethicality of the publication;
  2. Upon deciding to retract the article, the editorial board specifies the reason for the retraction in the meeting minutes (in the case of detected plagiarism, indicating the sources of the borrowed material and/or the source of information regarding the plagiarism), as well as the date of retraction. The article and its abstract remain on the journal’s website as part of the relevant issue, but the electronic version of the text is marked with the label “RETRACTED” and the date of retraction; the same notation is placed next to the article in the issue’s table of contents.
  3. The editorial board does not automatically remove articles from the electronic version of the journal or from the archive on the journal’s website, in order to maintain the integrity of the issue’s structure.
  4. A protocol is drawn up, specifying the date of the meeting, the composition of the panel, the results of the review, the reasoned decision, and the form of the retraction request.
  5. Information about retracted texts is submitted to scientific information databases.

We strive to notify all authors of the decision to retract the article and the text of the notification before the article is retracted. The journal may also notify other interested parties of the retraction, such as the institutions where the authors work, or another journal/publisher where the article or a related submission has been published.

Once an article has been retracted, it is no longer considered published.