Retraction notice to ¿Phytochemical, bactericidal, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties of various extracts from Pongamia pinnata and functional groups characterization by FTIR and HPLC analyses¿ [Environ. Res. 245 (2024)118044] (Environmental Research (2024) 245, (S0013935123028487), (10.1016/j.envres.2023.118044))
Academic Article in Scopus
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier policy on article withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor. An unauthorised authorship change was made when the revised version of this paper was submitted, following suggestions for relatively minor revisions from the reviewers and Guest Editor, with authors Paola Isabel Angulo-Bejarano, Hai-Anh Ha and Thai-Hang Nguyen-Thi (who became corresponding author), being added to the paper at first revision. No satisfactory explanation was given for this change at the time, nor was it approved by the editor. Post publication, responses to the journal's investigative enquiry were received from Mysoon Al-Ansari, Paola Isabel Angulo-Bejarano and Thai-Hang Nguyen-Thi. Mysoon Al-Ansari did not provide any specific explanation regarding the contributions of the added authors but stated that ¿where additional technical expertise was warranted in response to peer review feedback, those individuals who made significant new contributions were duly added to the author list.¿ Added author Paola Isabel Angulo Bejarano mentioned contributing to conceptualization of the study, providing essential resources, and participating in the writing, review, and editing of the manuscript, consistent with the CRediT authorship contribution statement. No evidence or further explanation for these contributions, which should have meant that the author was listed from the original submission, was provided. Added author Thai-Hang Nguyen-Thi also did not provide specific information about his contribution, only mentioning that he participated in the academic and scientific aspects of the study. In the CRediT authorship contribution statement, he was listed as contributing to ¿Writing - original draft, Visualization, Validation, Supervision", which would imply that he also should have been included in the authorship from the time that the original manuscript was submitted. None of these three added authors was present on an earlier version of the manuscript submitted (two days before) and subsequently desk rejected (one day before) the submission of this manuscript. The assessing editor was not satisfied with these explanations. This authorship change breaches the policies of the journal and as a result, the editor no longer has confidence in this paper and is retracting it. The journal apologises for not having identified the problematic authorship change during the review process and for any resulting inconvenience. Furthermore, review of this submission was handled by Guest Editor Rajasree Shanmuganathan despite an extensive recent record of collaboration, including co-publication, with one of the paper co-authors (Mysoon Al-Ansari). This compromised the editorial process and breached the journal's policies.
