Review of Multidisciplinary Education, Culture and Pedagogy is committed to protecting the integrity, accuracy, transparency, reliability, and permanence of the scholarly record. This policy sets out the journal’s procedures for handling allegations of research or publication misconduct, significant errors, ethical concerns, and post-publication scholarly discussion.

This policy should be read together with the journal’s Publication Ethics, which sets out the general ethical principles for authors, editors, reviewers, the Editorial Board, editorial staff, and the publisher.

Where applicable, the journal refers to guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, and relevant Crossref/Crossmark guidance concerning the maintenance of the scholarly record.

1. General Principles

Allegations of misconduct and post-publication concerns are assessed fairly, objectively, proportionately, and as confidentially as reasonably possible. Allegations are not treated as established misconduct before appropriate assessment or investigation.

Authors and other relevant parties will normally be given a reasonable opportunity to provide clarification, documents, or a response. A person with a relevant conflict of interest must not decide the outcome of the case.

Where necessary, the journal may consult independent reviewers, subject experts, statisticians, research integrity or ethics experts, legal advisers, institutions, research ethics committees, funders, or other relevant authorities.

Editorial actions will be proportionate to the nature, severity, available evidence, and potential effect of the issue on the reliability or integrity of the work. Financial or commercial considerations must not determine whether action is needed to protect the scholarly record.

2. Allegations of Research Misconduct

Research or publication misconduct includes, but is not limited to: fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, citation manipulation, peer review manipulation, data or image manipulation, unethical authorship practices, undisclosed conflicts of interest, duplicate submission, redundant publication, misrepresentation of ethical approval or consent, and other serious violations of research or publication ethics.

Concerns may be reported by authors, readers, reviewers, editors, institutions, research participants, whistleblowers, funders, or other parties. Reports should, where possible, identify the manuscript or article, describe the issue clearly, and provide evidence or supporting information. Reports can be sent to the Editorial Office at jurnalromeo@gmail.com.

Anonymous or confidential allegations may be considered when they contain specific, credible, and relevant information that allows a meaningful assessment.

When a credible concern is received, the journal may make an initial assessment, request clarification or documents, examine the evidence, consult independent experts, and communicate with the authors or other relevant parties. Where appropriate, the journal may contact the authors’ institution, research ethics committee, funder, research integrity office, or another competent authority for clarification, documents, or a formal investigation.

The journal may suspend peer review, editorial decisions, acceptance, production, or publication while a serious concern is being assessed.

Depending on the findings and the publication status of the manuscript or article, actions may include clarification, revision, rejection, withdrawal, correction, erratum, corrigendum, expression of concern, retraction, article removal, article replacement, or referral to an appropriate institution or authority.

3. Publication Status and Post-Publication Changes

An article is considered published when it has been made publicly available by the journal as an official scholarly publication, including as an Article in Press, Online First, Ahead of Print, or the Version of Record. Registering a DOI alone does not necessarily mean that a manuscript has been publicly published.

Once an article is published, it becomes part of the scholarly record and must not be silently deleted, overwritten, or replaced. Significant changes must be documented openly through the appropriate post-publication process.

4. Correction, Erratum, Corrigendum, and Expression of Concern

Correction: issued when a published article contains a substantive error or omission that must be corrected for the accuracy of the record but does not invalidate the main findings or conclusions, and responsibility for the error is mixed, unclear, or not clearly an erratum or corrigendum.

Erratum: issued when a substantive error was introduced mainly during the journal’s editorial, copyediting, typesetting, metadata, production, or publication process and does not invalidate the main findings or conclusions.

Corrigendum: issued when a substantive error or omission came mainly from the authors or the originally submitted manuscript but does not invalidate the main findings or conclusions.

Expression of Concern: issued when there are substantial concerns about the integrity, reliability, or ethical status of a published article, but an investigation is ongoing, the evidence is inconclusive, or a final decision cannot yet be made.

These notices are handled through editorial assessment. Independent expert review may be used when scientific, methodological, statistical, technical, ethical, or other specialized assessment is needed.

Each notice will clearly identify the original article, explain the issue or correction, and be linked to the original article. These notices are published as separate records with their own DOI. The original article will normally remain accessible with its original DOI and publication history.

5. Withdrawal

Withdrawal applies mainly to manuscripts that have not yet been publicly published by the journal.

A withdrawal request must be submitted in writing by an author and must include a clear reason. The journal may ask for clarification, confirmation, or approval from all authors before processing the request, particularly where the manuscript is in peer review, revision, acceptance, or production, or where the request may affect other authors’ rights or responsibilities.

Once an article has been publicly published (Article in Press, Online First, Ahead of Print, or Version of Record), concerns are normally handled through correction, erratum, corrigendum, expression of concern, retraction, removal, replacement, or another post-publication action, not withdrawal.

Administrative provisions for author-initiated withdrawal are described on the Author Fees page.

6. Retraction

A retraction may be issued when a published article is found to be seriously unreliable or should no longer be regarded as part of the reliable scholarly literature.

Grounds for retraction may include serious errors that invalidate the findings or conclusions, fabrication or falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, serious data or image manipulation, unethical research, fraudulent peer review, serious authorship or publication misconduct, or other major ethical or research integrity problems.

Retraction decisions are based on editorial or research integrity assessment and the available evidence. The journal may consult independent experts, institutions, research ethics committees, or other authorities where necessary.

A retraction notice will be published and linked to the original article. The notice should clearly identify the article, state that it has been retracted, and explain the reason well enough to inform readers, while distinguishing established findings from unresolved allegations.

The original article will normally remain accessible to preserve the scholarly record but will be clearly marked as RETRACTED, unless exceptional legal, privacy, confidentiality, safety, or other serious circumstances require removal.

7. Article Removal

Article removal is an exceptional measure and is not a routine alternative to correction or retraction.

Removal may be considered when continued public availability of the full text creates serious legal, privacy, confidentiality, copyright, health, safety, security, or similar risks, including a court order or other binding legal requirement.

Where possible, the bibliographic metadata, DOI, title, authors, and article landing page will remain available. The full text may be removed or restricted and replaced with a notice explaining, as far as legally and ethically possible, why the content is no longer available.

8. Article Replacement

Article replacement may be considered in exceptional circumstances where the changes needed in a published article are too extensive to be handled through a correction, erratum, or corrigendum, and a replacement version is necessary to keep an accurate scholarly record.

Replacement must not be used merely to improve the writing, update ordinary information, add new results, accommodate an author’s preference, or silently rewrite a published article.

The journal will decide whether replacement, retraction, correction, or another action is most appropriate, and may obtain independent expert assessment where substantial scientific, methodological, statistical, ethical, or technical changes are involved. The original article will remain traceable and clearly linked to the replacement record. Where appropriate, it may be marked REPLACED or RETRACTED AND REPLACED.

9. Comments and Criticism

The journal supports responsible post-publication scholarly discussion through comments and criticism. These may address methodology, statistical analysis, theoretical interpretation, reasoning, limitations, reproducibility, replication, interpretation of findings, or other substantive academic matters concerning a published article.

Substantive comments and criticism undergo editorial screening and may undergo independent peer review, depending on their scholarly and technical content.

Allegations of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, unethical research, authorship misconduct, peer review manipulation, or other serious ethical violations should normally be reported confidentially to the Editorial Office for preliminary assessment, and not presented as established facts in a public comment. Where a submission contains a possible misconduct allegation, the Editor may decide that the matter proceeds as scholarly discussion, a research integrity case, or both, through separate processes.

10. Author Response

Authors of the original article may be invited to respond to substantive comments and criticism. Responses should be professional, evidence-based, and focused on the scholarly issues raised.

An author response undergoes editorial assessment and may undergo independent peer review if it introduces new data, new analyses, substantial technical arguments, or new scholarly claims. Published comments and author responses will normally receive their own DOI and will be linked to the original article.

11. Minor Updates

Minor changes that do not materially affect meaning, interpretation, scholarly credit, reliability, conclusions, or important bibliographic metadata may be made without a formal correction. Examples include minor typographical errors, punctuation or formatting corrections, minor display problems, and repair of broken hyperlinks.

Minor updates do not normally need a separate DOI. Where the significance of a change is uncertain, the Editor may seek independent expert advice.

12. Fees and Administrative Charges

Administrative or production charges linked to author-requested withdrawal, post-publication changes, corrections, corrigenda, replacement, or other administrative services are governed by the journal’s Author Fees policy.

Actions required because of an error made by the journal or the publisher, or necessary for ethical, legal, scientific, research integrity, or scholarly record reasons, may be processed without charge according to the applicable fee policy and editorial assessment.

Payment status must not influence editorial decisions or prevent the journal from taking action needed to correct or protect the scholarly record.

13. Scholarly Record and Metadata

The journal uses DOI metadata to improve the transparency and discoverability of significant post-publication changes. Significant post-publication notices will be linked to the original article and, where appropriate, published as separate records with their own DOI. Relevant updates will be registered with Crossref in line with applicable metadata requirements.

14. Policy Review

The journal periodically reviews this policy to keep it consistent with publication ethics standards, scholarly publishing best practice, Crossref requirements, applicable laws and regulations, technological developments, and the journal’s operational needs. It may revise the policy in response to guidance from COPE, Crossref, the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), or other scholarly publishing organizations and authorities.

Where a case is not specifically covered by this policy, the Editor may use professional editorial judgment, considering external guidance, the available evidence, independent expert opinion where necessary, and the principles of fairness, transparency, proportionality, confidentiality, editorial independence, and protection of the scholarly record. The publisher may provide administrative, technical, legal, or operational support within its non-editorial role.

Until a revised version is formally adopted, the current approved version remains in force.

 

 

Further details on the editorial actions that may follow from a concern, namely correction, withdrawal, retraction, removal, and replacement, are set out in the journal’s Retraction, Withdrawal, Correction, Removal, and Replacement (RWCRR) Policy.