Regulations on Retraction of Articles

Regulations on Retraction of Articles
Published in Scientific Journals of Perm State University

Perm, 2025

 

1. General Provisions

1.1. Regulations on retraction is a local regulatory act of the Federal State Autonomous Educational Institution for Higher Education Perm State University (hereinafter referred to as PSU; also known as Perm State National Research University) and describes the procedure for retracting a published article in the event that there have been detected violations of ethical norms, incorrect data, plagiarism, or misrepresentation, this misleading readers and editors.
1.2. The rules for retraction of published articles from scientific journals and other publications (conference proceedings, collections of articles, etc.) are based on the guidelines, recommendations, and standards of international professional organizations, first of all, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Council on Ethics of Scientific Publications of the ASEP (Association of Scientific Editors and Publishers, transliterated from Russian and abbreviated as ANRI) as well as other professional Russian and foreign organizations.

2. Definitions

• retraction is a mechanism for correcting published information and notifying readers that the published article contains serious flaws or erroneous data that cannot be relied upon, or that it has been published with serious violations of publication ethics. The inaccuracies may be the result of bona fide (honest) error or deliberate violations;
• duplicate publication is publishing the same work in more than one resource (journal) without proper referencing provided and permissions obtained;
• conflict of interest is any situation where personal interest can cause bias in decision-making;
• illegitimate citation is using someone else's text without a reference to the original author and the source it has been borrowed from, or with a reference, but not justified by the purpose of citation;
• plagiarism is presenting someone else's literary, scientific, or artistic work as your own;
• publication ethics (ethics of scientific publications) is a system of norms of professional behavior in the relationships between authors, peer reviewers, editors, and publishers in the process of creating, disseminating, and using scientific publications;
• self-plagiarism is repeated use by an author of their own research results and text previously published elsewhere without indicating that;
• text fabrication is inventing information, facts, or data that have not been obtained as a result of research;
• text falsification is the deliberate alteration, distortion, or misrepresentation of information, facts, documents, or data in order to create a false impression about something.

3. The Purpose of Retraction

3.1. Retraction is aimed at correcting published information, notifying the authors of the article, other authors, and readers about the illegitimacy of using the results of the retracted article in their research, ensuring the integrity of bona fide research, as well as protecting the reputation of the journal in order to maintain readers' trust in the quality of its content.
3.2. Retraction is not intended to punish authors who have committed violations. Exceptions may be cases of malicious violations of ethics, when journals refuse to accept in the future articles by such authors.

4. Grounds for Retraction

4.1. Incorrect borrowing and/or unattributed borrowing (plagiarism);
4.2. Duplicate publication in more than one source (journal);
4.3. Self-plagiarism;
4.4. Data falsification;
4.5. Fabrication;
4.6. Significant errors in the article (including misinterpretation of the research results) that reduce its scientific value;
4.7. Authorship misconduct (persons who have contributed to the research are omitted; the author list includes persons who do not meet the authorship criteria);
4.8. Hidden conflict of interest;
4.9. Republication of an article without the author’s consent;
4.10. Other violations.

5. Main Provisions

5.1. Retraction is carried out following an official request submitted to the journal by the author(s) or other persons with a statement about the violations detected. It can also be initiated by the decision of the editors, editorial board, or publisher. Anonymous statements cannot be grounds for initiating the retraction process.

5.2. In the event that a minor part of an article (e.g., a sentence) constitutes unlawful citation/plagiarism, it is possible not to retract, but to correct the article (edit the article without its retraction).
5.3. Retraction is carried out after thorough investigation of the circumstances that have led to the publication of false information.
5.4. The decision is made at a meeting of the editorial board, taking into account all the facts available and all opportunities to check the publication for compliance with the requirements.
5.5. In the event that duplicate publication is found in two or more sources (journals), the editors discuss the situation among themselves and agree on any of the following options:

5.5.1. The text is retracted simultaneously by all the sources (journals) that have published the article.

5.5.2. An agreement is reached on one of the versions of the text that will not be retracted from the journal. An earlier publication is preferred. If the duplication of the publication was due to missed deadlines and a delayed response to the authors by the first journal, which published the article simultaneously with the second journal or later, and also due to the lack of transparency in the actions of the former, the article should be retracted from the first journal.
5.6. If it is impossible to obtain convincing evidence of the authenticity of a publication (for example, if the authors provide contradictory information; the institution where the authors work refuses to investigate alleged violations or make public the results of such investigations; if the investigations were not conducted fairly or took an unreasonably long time), the editors should promptly publish an expression of concern regarding the text, without retracting the publication until convincing proof of violations is obtained. If over time there appears a convincing proof demonstrating that the article is unreliable, the article should be retracted from the journal; if the doubts are not confirmed, it is necessary to publish a corresponding comment in the journal.
5.7. If retraction is related to the actions of some authors of the article but not all of them, this must be mentioned in a retraction notice.
5.8. Retraction does not depend on how long ago the article were violations have been revealed was published.
5.9. Retraction of an article does not imply its removal from the journal or from the website, but the information about violations detected warns against its further use. Only in the exceptional event that the text is considered capable of having harmful effects on society and science, an article can be removed from the website.

6. Initiation of Retraction

6.1. If the author/co-authors consider/s it necessary to retract an article, they should contact the editors and explain the reason for their decision. If the editors respond to the request and agree to the retraction, then they independently carry out the procedure for retracting the article in accordance with these Regulations. If the editors do not respond to the authors' request, the authors should contact the Center for Scientific Publications of the Publishing Department at Perm State University.
6.2. In the event that the editors of a scientific journal receive a request initiated by a person who is not part of the author team of the publication, the editors conduct an investigation by contacting the authors or the organization where the authors work. After certain clarifications have been received, the editors make a decision on whether to retract the article, correct it, or refuse to carry out retraction/correction, and inform the applicant and the authors about the decision. In the case of a positive decision, the editors carry out the retraction procedure independently and in accordance with these Regulations.
6.3. In the event that the editors decide to retract an article based on their examination or information received, they inform the authors/author team about the decision and receive consent to the retraction. The authors must be informed about the reason for the retraction of the article. If the author/ author team ignores the editors’ request, while the violations are obvious and harm the reputation of the journal, the editors have the right to retract the article without the consent of the authors. It is possible to send information to the organization where the author/authors work/s and inform the organization about the decision.

7. Procedure for Retraction of an Article

7.1. The article retraction procedure is carried out after an internal investigation, conducted without notifying the parties, and after the editor-in-chief and the editorial board make a decision based on the results of the investigation. To conduct the investigation, the journal’s editor-in-chief may appoint experts from the editorial board or invite members of the editorial council (if there is one) or external specialists.
7.2. If violations are confirmed, the editors notify the author about the measures being taken to correct the ethical violation and about the necessity to provide explanations on the issue.
7.3. The decision on retraction of an article is recorded in the minutes of a meeting of the journal's editorial board. The minutes include: the date of the meeting; the list of the editorial board members who participated in the meeting and made the decision; a description of the results of the examination; justification of the decision; identification data of the retracted article; information about the initiator of the retraction.
7.4. The editors initiate the retraction procedure with mandatory notification of all interested participants in the process.
7.5. A retraction notice, containing information on the reason for the retraction, is placed on the journal’s website in the table of contents of the issue where the article was published and in the metadata of the article in the HTML format. The electronic version of the article is labelled with the word ʽRETRACTEDʼ and the retraction date.
7.6. A short extract from the minutes containing the date of retraction may also be posted on the journal's website in the Retractions section, which includes information about all retracted articles.
7.7. After the article retraction procedure has been completed, information about the retraction is passed on to the Center for Scientific Publications of the Publishing Department at Perm State University to notify all national and foreign information resources in which the journal is indexed or published. Properly presented information about retraction in the journal is indexed in databases (including Scopus, WoS) and included in them as a separate publication labelled with the word ʽRetractedʼ.
7.8. Russian resources, including the Scientific Electronic Library (eLibrary.ru) and other Russian information resources (CyberLeninka, Rucont, and other electronic library systems) are provided with the following materials:
7.8.1. Minutes of the editorial board’s meeting at which the decision to retract the article was made;
7.8.2. Full information about the retracted article in the following form (may be included in the minutes or attached to them as an annex):
7.8.2.1. full name of the author(s), title of the article;
7.8.2.2. title of the journal and full identification data of the retracted article, DOI (if available);
7.8.2.3. subject area of the retracted article (social sciences, agriculture, technical sciences, etc.);
7.8.2.4. initiator of the retraction;
7.8.2.5. grounds for the retraction;
7.8.2.6. date of the decision;
7.8.2.7. link to the page on the journal's website that contains information about the retraction;
7.8.2.8. link to the page in the journal issue where the retraction notice is given, or identification data of the information in the journal where the retraction notice is published.

8. Results

8.1. The results of retraction are published in the journal with the indication in the title of the publication of the fact that this article is retracted, with the indication of the reasons for the retraction, persons or organizations that initiated the retraction, and the date of retraction.
8.2. Retraction does not mean that the article is removed from the journal's website and/or from bibliographic databases.
8.3. Retracted articles (metadata and full text) remain on the platform elibrary.ru with a note that the article has been retracted (in the metadata and in the full text, which is also marked as ʽRetractedʼ). However, retracted articles and references to them are excluded from the Russian Science Citation Index database (РИНЦ) and are not taken into account when calculating the journal's and authors' indicators.

9. Final Provisions

9.1. The authors may disagree with the decision on retraction, but this does not negate the editors’ right to carry out the retraction procedure.
9.2. In order to maintain the quality of the content and avoid the need to retract articles due to ethical violations, editors should carefully check submitted manuscripts for plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplication, falsification and fabrication of the text with the use of Russian and foreign systems for detecting borrowings, as well as organize and maintain a high-quality peer review process.
9.3. These Regulations come into force from the moment of their approval by the Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation of PSU.
9.4. Amendments and additions to these Regulations are made at the suggestion of the Director of the Center for Scientific Publications of the Publishing Department at PSU and the Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation of PSU.
9.5. The new version of the Regulations, containing the amendments made, comes into force from the moment of its approval by the Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation of PSU.

Approved by Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation of Perm State University V. A. Irkha.AGREED:

Head of the Legal Department N. S. Ardzheniya

Director of the Center for Scientific Publications N. V. Shikalova