A journal has been contacted by a group of authors from Ukraine who wish to retract their article because of acute ethical issues in relation to the war with Russia. The authors are employees of a research institute in Ukraine. When preparing their article they were not fully informed about the country of the organisers of the conference. They are concerned that participation in a Russian conference may bring dismissal from their posts, and also potentially imprisonment.
Given the critical situation of this very specific case the publisher had to act quickly. After collecting the approval of all the authors and the editor in charge of this paper the publisher decided to fully withdraw the article from the publication. They published a note without transparently displaying the real reason for the withdrawal to ensure the safety of the authors. Since then several similar cases have been received.
More: https://publicationethics.org/case/ukraine-authors-retract-russian-article
