Article Withdrawal Policy

Withdrawal of articles is strongly discouraged and only used in exceptional circumstances for early versions articles which have been accepted for publication but which have not been formally published yet (“articles in press”) but which may already appear online. Such versions may contain errors, may have accidentally been submitted twice or may be in violation a journal’s publishing ethics guidelines (e.g. multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, etc.). In such situations, especially in case of legal/ethical violations or false/inaccurate data which could pose a detrimental risk if used, it may be decided to withdraw the early version of the article from our electronic platform. Withdrawal means that the article content (both the HTML- and PDF-versions) is removed and replaced with an HTML page and PDF stating that the article has been withdrawn according to Atlantis Press policies on article withdrawal with a link to the then-current policy text.

Note that if Authors retain copyright for an article this does not mean they automatically have the right to withdraw it after publication. The integrity of the published scientific record is of paramount importance and these policies on retractions and withdrawals still apply in such cases.

  1. Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. 
  2. Infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like. Occasionally a retraction will be used to correct errors in submission or publication. The retraction of an article by its authors or the editor under the advice of members of the scholarly community has long been an occasional feature of the learned world.
  3. In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database. This will only occur where the article is clearly defamatory, or infringes others’ legal rights, or where the article is, or we have good reason to expect it will be, the subject of a court order, or where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk.
  4. In cases where the article, if acted upon, might pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original article may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. In these circumstances the procedures for retraction will be followed with the difference that the database retraction notice will publish a link to the corrected re-published article and a history of the document.