Table 1.

Retraction guidelines and definitions adopted from the Glossary of retractions [11], Committee on Publication Ethics [12], and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [13]

Group	Action	Definition
		Requesting concerns to
		-Institutions of authors
Editors	Correspondence	-Institutions of co-authors
		-Person responsible for research governance
		-Regulatory body
Editors, authors, readers	Letters	Published letter to the editor
Editors	Editor’s note	A minor point issued by the editor.
Editors	Editor’s warning	An issued statement by journal editors eliciting concern over the validity of a given paper or study.
Editors	Expression of concern	A statement issued by the editor to question the validity of a paper or portions of that paper.
Editors, authors	Errata	Published corrections
Editors, authors	Partial retraction	Retraction of a portion of a paper
Authors	Retraction	Formal withdrawal of one or more papers by one or all of the authors
Authors, editors	Retraction with republication	Replacement in case where a honest error (e.g. miscalculation) leads to a major change of the results of the original paper
Editors, institutions, funders	Retraction without permission	The formal withdrawal of one or more papers by a journal editor, the institution where the study took place, one or more of the papers authors, or funders.