Retraction, Withdrawal, and Correction (R-W-C) Policy

Research Integrity & Scholarly Record

A retraction may be issued when published findings, legal arguments, interpretations, or conclusions are considered unreliable, invalid, or seriously compromised by error, misconduct, or major ethical problems.

• Fabrication, falsification, serious factual error, major analytical error, or material misrepresentation of legal sources;
• Redundant or duplicate publication;
• Plagiarism, manipulated authorship, or other serious publication-ethics violations;
• Misquotation, fabrication, or materially misleading interpretation of legislation, regulations, court decisions, treaties, or other legal authorities;
• Research conducted without required ethical approval, institutional authorization, informed consent, or appropriate privacy safeguards where empirical legal research involves human participants or confidential records;
• Unauthorized disclosure or misuse of confidential, privileged, personal, judicial, institutional, or legally protected information; or
• Manipulation of peer review or other publication processes.

Retraction notices identify the affected article, explain the reason factually and transparently, remain publicly available, and are linked to the original article so that readers, researchers, practitioners, and institutions can clearly understand the status of the legal scholarly record.

Withdrawal is generally limited to manuscripts that have not yet become the final Version of Record (VoR).

Before Publication

An accepted but unpublished manuscript may be withdrawn in exceptional circumstances, such as duplicate submission, major errors that invalidate the legal analysis or conclusions, serious ethical concerns, authorship disputes, unauthorized use of confidential legal materials, or substantial copyright and intellectual-property issues.

After Publication

Removal of a Version of Record is strongly discouraged and considered only in exceptional circumstances involving legal requirements, court orders, privacy or safety concerns, defamation risks, confidential or privileged information, or serious copyright and intellectual-property violations. A withdrawal or removal notice and relevant bibliographic metadata will normally remain available to preserve transparency in the scholarly record.

An Expression of Concern may be issued when serious questions have been raised about a published article but sufficient evidence for a correction or retraction is not yet available. This may occur while an investigation into legal sources, factual claims, authorship, research ethics, confidential information, conflicts of interest, citation practices, or publication integrity is ongoing, inconclusive, or delayed. The notice may later be updated or replaced following the outcome of the investigation.

Corrections are published when an error affects the accuracy, interpretation, attribution, or discoverability of an article but does not invalidate its principal legal analysis or conclusions.

• Minor factual, citation, quotation, or data-presentation errors;
• Incorrect author, affiliation, title, institution, jurisdiction, or other metadata;
• Incorrect or incomplete references to legislation, regulations, treaties, judicial decisions, case numbers, or other legal authorities;
• Minor errors in tables, figures, comparative-law information, empirical legal data, or explanatory notes that do not invalidate the main conclusions;
• Missing acknowledgments or funding information;
• Missing or incomplete ethical, conflict-of-interest, data-availability, or participant-protection declarations; or
• Other errors requiring transparent clarification without invalidating the article's central legal arguments.

Articles already assigned to an issue normally receive a separate correction notice linked to the original publication. Minor typographical changes that do not alter legal meaning generally do not require a formal correction.

Scholarly Record Principle: Amendment notices are intended to correct and clarify the legal scholarly record transparently rather than obscure the publication history of an article.