PROCEDURE FOR THE RETRACTION OF PUBLISHED ARTICLES

General Provisions. The retraction of a published article is applied in order to correct the scientific record and inform the academic community about significant violations of academic integrity or errors that make the further use of the research results impossible. The editorial board of the journal follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

1. Grounds for the Retraction of an Article. An article may be retracted in the event of detection of:

• plagiarism or self-plagiarism;
• data fabrication or falsification;
• significant methodological or factual errors affecting the reliability of the results;
• duplicate publication;
• copyright infringement;
• undisclosed conflict of interest;
• unethical use of artificial intelligence;
• other serious violations of publication ethics.

2. Initiation of the Retraction Procedure. The retraction procedure may be initiated by:

• the editorial board;
• the author (authors) of the article;
• a reviewer;
• a third party (readers, research institutions, editorial offices of other journals).

The request shall be submitted to the editorial office in writing with a justification of the reasons.

Review and Decision-Making:

• 1. The Editor-in-Chief conducts a preliminary review of the information received.
• 2. If necessary, independent experts or members of the editorial board are involved.
• 3. The author (authors) shall be given an opportunity to provide written explanations.
• 4. The final decision on retraction shall be made by the editorial board by a majority vote.

Procedure for Announcing a Retraction. If a decision to retract is made:

• the article shall remain in the journal archive with a clear mark “RETRACTED / ВІДКЛИКАНО”;
• an official retraction notice stating the reasons shall be published;
• the information shall be communicated to the relevant scientometric databases and repositories;
• the article’s DOI shall be retained with a corresponding note.

Corrections and Expressions of Concern. In cases where the violations are not critical, the editorial board may apply:

• publication of a correction (Correction);
• publication of an expression of concern (Expression of Concern).

Consequences for Authors. The editorial board reserves the right to:

• temporarily or permanently restrict the authors’ possibility of publication;
• inform the author’s research institution;
• refuse further cooperation with the journal.

The retraction procedure shall be carried out in compliance with the principles of objectivity, impartiality, and confidentiality and may be revised in accordance with updates to international standards of publication ethics.