Correction and Retraction

Article Withdrawal, Correction, and Retraction Policy

Procedures for retraction, correction, removal, and replacement of published articles, following COPE guidelines.

1. Policy Statement

Authors carefully prepare their manuscripts, and Educational Technology in Developing Countries (ETDC) conducts a rigorous peer review process. However, published articles may sometimes need to be withdrawn or removed for scientific reasons. Such actions are not taken lightly and may only occur under extraordinary circumstances. Corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies, when needed, are carried out under strict standards to maintain confidence in the authority of the electronic archive. The journal's commitment is to preserve the integrity and completeness of the scientific record for researchers and library archives.

2. Article Retraction

ETDC is committed to maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record. In some cases, it is necessary to retract a published article.

Grounds for Retraction

Major Scientific Error

There is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct such as data fabrication, or honest error such as miscalculation or experimental error, that invalidates the article's conclusions.

Redundant Publication

The findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross referencing, permission, or justification.

Ethical Issues

There is plagiarism, including appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without proper credit, or inappropriate authorship issues.

To ensure that retractions are handled according to publication best practice and COPE retraction guidelines, ETDC adopts the following process:

a.	An article requiring potential retraction is brought to the journal editor's attention.
b.	The journal editor follows the step by step guidelines of the COPE flowcharts, including evaluating a response from the author of the article in question.
c.	Before any action is taken, the editor's findings are sent to the Ethics Advisory Board to ensure consistency with industry best practices.
d.	The final decision on whether to retract is communicated to the author and, where necessary, to other relevant bodies such as the author's institution.
e.	The retraction statement is posted online and published in the next available issue of the journal.

If authors retain the copyright for an article, this does not automatically give them the right to retract it after publication. The integrity of the published scientific record is paramount, and COPE's Retraction Guidelines still apply in such cases.

3. Article Correction

ETDC considers issuing a correction when a small part of an otherwise reliable publication reports flawed data or proves to be misleading, especially if this is the result of honest error, or when the author or contributor list is incorrect, for example a deserving author has been omitted or someone who does not meet authorship criteria has been included.

Corrections to peer reviewed content fall into one of three categories:

Erratum

Publisher correction

Notifies readers of a critical error made by publishing or journal staff, usually a production error, that has a negative impact on the publication record, the scientific integrity of the article, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Corrigendum

Author correction

Notifies readers of an important error made by the authors that negatively impacts the publication record, the scientific integrity of the article, or the reputation of the authors or the journal.

Addendum

Author addition

An addition to the article by its authors to explain inconsistencies, expand the existing work, or otherwise update the information in the main work.

The decision on whether a correction is issued is made by the editors of the journal, sometimes with advice from reviewers or Editorial Board members. Handling editors contact the authors of the paper concerned with a request for clarification, but the final decision on whether a correction is required and which type rests with the editors.

4. Article Removal

In an extremely limited number of cases, it may be necessary to remove a published article from the online platform. This only happens when an article is clearly defamatory, infringes others' legal rights, is the subject of a court order or expected to be, or, if acted upon, may pose a serious health risk. In such circumstances, the article's metadata, including title and author information, are retained, but the text is replaced with a screen indicating that the article has been removed for legal reasons.

5. Article Replacement

When an article, if acted upon, may pose a serious health risk, the authors of the original paper may wish to retract the flawed original and replace it with a corrected version. The procedure above for retraction is followed, with the difference that the article retraction notice contains a link to the corrected republished article along with a history of the document.