Withdrawal and Retraction Policy
EBGC keeps published articles as complete and unchanged as possible. Withdrawal, retraction, or removal is carried out only in exceptional circumstances and follows the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Article Withdrawal (before publication)
- Authors may withdraw a manuscript that is still under review if they find a serious error, or if the manuscript was accidentally submitted twice to EBGC or to another journal.
- Withdrawal also applies to ethical violations such as multiple submission, false authorship, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, or fraudulent use of data.
- To withdraw, the corresponding author sends a withdrawal letter, signed by all authors, to the editorial office through the Contact page.
Article Retraction
An article is retracted when it contains ethical violations (multiple submission, false authorship, plagiarism, data fabrication) or serious errors that make its findings unreliable. Retraction may be initiated by the editor, the authors, or their institution.
- Before publication: the editor returns the manuscript to the authors with a retraction letter from the Editor-in-Chief.
- After publication: a retraction notice is published and linked to the article; the article remains online, marked “Retracted” on every page of the PDF, and the Crossref metadata is updated.
Article Removal
An article is removed from the online database only when it is clearly defamatory, infringes the legal rights of others, is the subject of a court order, or could pose a serious risk. The title and authors remain in the metadata, and the text is replaced with a notice that the article was removed for legal reasons.
Article Replacement
If an article contains errors that could cause serious harm, the authors may retract it and publish a corrected version. The retraction notice links to the corrected article.
