RETRACTION AND CORRECTION POLICY

Once published, an article forms part of the author's academic record and may not be informally modified or removed without the publication of appropriate information. The Editorial Team of Przegląd Prawno-Ekonomiczny, guided by the standards set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), adheres to the ethical principles relating to the publication of academic texts in the Journal and combats practices that are inconsistent with accepted ethical standards. 

Retraction (withdrawal of an article)

In the event of a breach of ethical principles, the Editorial Team may decide to retract a published text, applying the COPE Retraction Guidelines in such cases - https://publicationethics.org/guidance/guideline/retraction-guidelines. 

Retraction may occur where: 
- there is evidence that the publication contains serious methodological or computational errors, or is based on non-existent or falsified data; 
- there has been misrepresentation regarding the authorship of the publication (identity theft, fictious authorship, ghostwriting, or guest authorship), and the author's responsibility for the research cannot be confirmed; 
- the publication is the result of fraud, e.g. it was produced by a research paper mill, or the author has not disclosed the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools in writing the text;
- the publication contains an unacceptable level of similarity to previously published content (plagiarism, self-plagiarism);
- the research results have already been published elsewhere, and the text does not cite this source, permission for republication has not been obtained, or republication is not justified (so-called cases of redundant publication);
- during publication, copyright or related rights have been infringed, or there has been a breach of the law or ethical standards in some other way, e.g. through defamation, invasion of privacy, etc.;
- after publication, conflicts of interest were revealed between authors, editors, or reviewers which may have influenced the interpretation or evaluation of the text;
- the text published research results for which the authors had not obtained the required consent, e.g. from an ethics committee. 

Whenever a published article is retracted, a retraction notice is published immediately on the journal’s website with a link to the retracted text and contains the following information: the title and author of the retracted work, the date of retraction, the party responsible for the decision to retract the article (authors or editors/publisher), and the reason(s) for the retraction. Retracted texts are not removed from the published version of the journal, but the fact and reason for their retraction are clearly marked. This does not apply to situations where the legitimate legal interests of the author, the Editorial Team, the publisher or third parties may result in the text being completely withdrawn – in such cases, the Editorial Team publishes an explanatory notice.

The author has the right to appeal against the Editorial Team’s decision.

In all cases, the Editorial Team adheres to the detailed recommendations set out in the COPE Retraction Guidelines.

Errata (correction or correction notice)

If flaws or errors are found in a published text, but these are not significant enough to warrant its retraction, the text is corrected but not retracted. Corrections may be made as follows:

Correction notice – a statement issued by the author(s), containing a brief explanation of the corrections made to remove errors detected in the original text after its publication, including any changes affecting the conclusions. Once the original text has been removed and replaced with the corrected version, a correction notice is issued, containing a link to the corrected article.

Editorial note – a statement issued by the editors, informing readers that corrections have been made to the article after publication to rectify typographical or production errors (attributed to the editors or publisher) which affect the integrity of the article’s metadata (e.g. the title or list of authors) or significantly hinder readers’ understanding of the article. Once the original article has been removed and replaced with the corrected version, an editorial note is issued with a link to the corrected article.

Minor errors that do not affect the integrity of the text’s metadata or readers’ ability to understand it, and do not involve any scientific inaccuracies or omissions, may be corrected at the editors’ discretion. The original text is then removed and replaced with the corrected version, which includes the date of the correction. Such minor corrections (which do not require a correction notice or an editorial note) may only be made within one year of the original publication date. If an article is corrected more than one year after the original publication date, an editorial note is issued.