The journal’s editorial board adheres to international standards of publication ethics, in particular the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and has established a procedure for the retraction of scientific publications in the event of violations of academic integrity or significant errors in the content of an article.

The grounds for retracting an article are:

‒ establishment of plagiarism or improper citation;

‒ fabrication or falsification of research results;

‒ duplication of publication (republication of the same results);

‒ significant errors affecting the reliability of the conclusions;

‒ copyright infringement;

‒ inaccurate information regarding authorship;

‒ other breaches of the principles of academic integrity.

The retraction procedure involves:

‒ initiation of the review process by the editorial board, reviewers or third parties;

‒ conducting an investigation involving members of the editorial board and, where necessary, independent experts;

‒ notifying the author(s) of the identified violations and giving them the opportunity to provide an explanation;

‒ the editorial board making a decision regarding retraction or other measures.

If a decision on retraction is made:

‒ a retraction notice stating the reasons is published on the journal’s website;

‒ the electronic version of the article is retained in the archive but marked as ‘retracted’;

‒ a corresponding note is placed in the PDF version and on the article page;

‒ information regarding the retraction is submitted to scientometric and information systems (where indexing is available).

The retraction of an article does not entail its physical removal from the archive, which ensures the transparency of scientific communication and the preservation of the publication’s history.

Authors have the right to submit a reasoned appeal against the retraction decision, which is considered by an independent member of the editorial board.