Article Retraction & Withdrawal

Article Retraction & Withdrawal

In academic publishing, it is the Editor’s responsibility to decide which submitted articles are suitable for publication. The Editor follows the journal’s editorial policies and legal rules about defamation, copyright, and plagiarism.

Once published, articles are part of the permanent academic record. They should stay available and unchanged unless there is a serious reason to remove or correct them. In rare cases, an article may need to be retracted (officially canceled) or removed (taken down). If that happens, LFR Journal will keep all versions of the article, even those that were retracted or deleted.

This policy helps ensure that any changes or removals are handled properly, following the best practices in academic publishing. As standards evolve, we will update this policy based on feedback from the academic and library communities. We also support creating international standards for article retraction and withdrawal.

Article Retraction

An article can be retracted if it contains serious problems, such as:

  • being submitted to multiple journals at the same time,

  • false authorship,

  • plagiarism,

  • or using fake or manipulated data.

Before retracting an article, the author must submit a signed written statement, and all authors must agree to the retraction.

A retraction notice will be published, explaining the reason for the retraction and who requested it. The original article will remain available online and in print, but it will be clearly marked as “Retracted.” The retraction will also appear in the journal’s table of contents.

Article Withdrawal

Article withdrawal is strongly discouraged and only allowed in special cases, such as:

  • the article was accepted but not officially published yet,

  • it appeared online by mistake,

  • or it violates publishing ethics (like plagiarism, false authorship, or double submission).

If the article contains harmful or false information, it may be withdrawn from LFR’s website. Both the HTML and PDF versions will be removed and replaced with a message saying the article has been withdrawn, along with a link to the journal’s withdrawal policy.

Note: Even if the author holds the copyright, they do not have the right to withdraw the article after publication. The integrity of the published record must be preserved.

Article Removal

In very rare cases, a published article may need to be completely removed, such as when:

  • it contains defamatory content,

  • it violates someone’s legal rights,

  • it is subject to a court order,

  • or it poses a serious health risk if acted upon.

In such cases, the article’s metadata (title and author) will remain visible, but the content will be replaced with a message saying it was removed for legal reasons.

Article Replacement

If an article contains content that could seriously harm readers (for example, incorrect health advice), the author can request to replace it with a corrected version. In this case, the original article will be removed and replaced with the corrected one. A notice will be published showing the change and linking to the updated version.

Article Payment

If an article is accepted for publication, the author must pay an Article Publication Fee to cover publishing costs.
If the author later decides to withdraw the article, this payment is non-refundable.

Let me know if you'd like this version formatted as a formal guideline document or for use on your journal’s website.