Every article published by the AB Journals is published mainly online. However, if an article is published and changes are required to be made to it, this will be followed by a post-publication notice which will be permanently connected to the original articles so that the readers will be fully informed of any important changes. However, this can be in form of correction notice, a retraction/ removal or an expression of concern.
What to do if your article contains an error
Once an author finds an error(s) in their published article, it is very important that they let us know especially if these error(s) can alter the further interpretation of the data included or quashes the reliability of information presented. By notifying these errors, it is the responsibility of the corresponding author to ensure that viable agreement has been reached between all the listed co-authors as regards putting forward any requests for corrections or retraction of an article. All request should be address to the journal editor.
CORRECTIONS TO PUBLISHED WORK
Listed below are the notices to ensure that the scholarly record ascertain their quality in post-publication;
Retraction
A notice of retraction will be issued where a major error in terms of the analysis or the method invalidates or does not support the conclusion in the article or where a research or publication misconduct has taken place. By this, we mean research without required ethical approvals, manipulated images, fabricated data, plagiarism or duplicated publication. This decision is to mainly retract an article that has been published.
Correction Notice
A notice of correction will be issued if it is necessary to correct an omission or error which can alter the general interpretation of an article, for example, this includes mislabeling of a figure, missing key information on funding or competing interests of the authors. Thus, it is important to note that all major errors are followed by a distinguished correction notice while the minor errors will only be accompanied by a footnote which detailed the correction to the readers.
Expression of Concerns
Expression of concerns may be raised in some instances where concerns of an important nature have been issued in cases of serious publication or research misconduct. Also in cases which the outcome of the research is inconclusive or where due to various complexities the investigation will not be completed in a considerable time. Also in cases in which there are well-founded concerns that findings are unreliable or misconduct may have occurred.
Article Removal
Issuance of an article removal can be raised only in rare conditions where the problems are very serious in nature and cannot be addressed either by the issuance of Retraction or Correction notice. An article would be removed if the content contains what could serve as a serious risk if it is followed or the article contains content that goes against the right to privacy of a study participant. In other instances, the article can be removed if it is subjected to a court order.
ARTICLE UPDATE AND SCHOLARLY DISCUSSION
Addendum
Notification of additional information to an article is also known as an addendum. However, addendum do not contradict the original publication and they are not used to fix errors although if the author requires to update or include some key information then this can be published as an addendum. All addendum is electronically linked to the published article.
Comments, Response and Rejoinder Correspondence
Comments are commonly short articles which outline an observation on a published article. When the comment of a published article is submitted to the journal editor, it may be subject to peer-review hence, the comment will be shared with the author of the published article who is requested to submit a response.
Thence, this response again may be subjected to peer-review and it will be shared with the commentator who may be required to submit a rejoinder. The rejoinder may be subject to peer-review and also with the published article author. At this point, no further correspondence will be considered for publication and the editor may decide to reject any correspondence. All published comments, responses, and rejoinders are connected to the published article which they are related to..
