While there are many pieces of science news of potential interest, this has some public newsworthiness because of connection with some recent widely reported events, and because of some extant public circulation and representation of the specific Article in Press as a published scientific article. The exceptional circumstance of such as withdrawl also presents an opportunity to examine the criteria and categories used when scientific research submitted for publication does not proceed to/is withdrawn prior to that publication, or is retracted, removed or replaced subsequent to publication. The specific reason for withdrawl of the Article in Press is not known at this time, although the withdrawl was at the request of the Neurotoxicology Editor.
The article-in-press,
Hewitson, L., Houser, L.A., Stott, C., Sackett, G., Tomko, J.L., Atwood, L.B., White, E.H., & Wakefield, A.J. (2009). WITHDRAWN :Delayed acquisition of neonatal reflexes in newborn primates receiving a thimerosal-containing Hepatitis B vaccine: Influence of gestational age and birth weight. Neurotoxicology.has been appended with WITHDRAWN to the title and Withdrawn Article in Press on the access page to the article.
The "note to users" clarifies the status of this work and the conditions of Withdrawn Articles in Press,
"Note to users: Withdrawn Articles in Press are proofs of articles which have been peer reviewed and initially accepted, but have since been withdrawn before being published in this journal. Reasons for withdrawal may be due to a decision by the author and/or editor, accidental duplication of an article elsewhere, or because the content contravenes the Elsevier publishing policy in some way. Withdrawn Articles in Press are only visible to users when following an external link, e.g., an end user following a PubMed or DOI link. Such Withdrawn Articles in Press are not searchable or otherwise available in ScienceDirect."additional amplification on the Elsevier policy page of the "exceptional circumstances" which would accompany withdrawl, retraction, removal or replacement of a scholarly scientific work,
"It is a general principle of scholarly communication that the editor of a learned journal is solely and independently responsible for deciding which articles submitted to the journal shall be published. In making this decision the editor is guided by policies of the journal's editorial board and constrained by such legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.The policy page continues with the other categories and conditions.
An outcome of this principle is the importance of the scholarly archive as a permanent, historic record of the transactions of scholarship. Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as far as is possible. However, very occasionally circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be retracted or even removed. Such actions must not be undertaken lightly and can only occur under exceptional circumstances, such as:
* Article Withdrawal: Only used for Articles in Press which represent early versions of articles and sometimes contain errors, or may have been accidentally submitted twice. Occasionally, but less frequently, the articles may represent infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submission, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like..."
© 2010 Regina G. Claypool-Frey
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