This policy applies exclusively to articles in press, which are early versions of manuscripts that may contain errors or, in rare cases, constitute violations of professional ethical standards—such as multiple submissions, false claims of authorship, plagiarism, or fraudulent data practices. Articles in press (i.e., accepted for publication but not yet formally published and therefore lacking complete volume, issue, and page information) that contain errors, are discovered to be inadvertent duplicates of already published work, or are found to violate the Journal of Digital Islamic Thought publishing ethics guidelines—as determined by the editors—may be withdrawn.

Withdrawal means that the article’s content (HTML and PDF) is removed and replaced with an HTML page and a PDF stating that the article has been withdrawn in accordance with the Journal of Digital Islamic Thought Policy on Articles in Press Withdrawal, including a link to the current policy document.

Article Retraction

Retractions address violations of professional ethical standards, including multiple submissions, false claims of authorship, plagiarism, or fraudulent use of data. Retractions may also be issued to correct significant errors in submissions or publications. The retraction of an article—whether initiated by the authors or by the editor upon consultation with the scholarly community—is an established practice in academic publishing. Standards for managing retractions have been developed by organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the Journal of Digital Islamic Thought adheres to these best practices:

• A retraction notice titled “Retraction: [article title]”, signed by the authors and/or the editor, is published in the paginated section of a subsequent journal issue and listed in the table of contents.

• In the electronic version, a link is provided to the original article.

• The online article is preceded by a screen displaying the retraction notice; this is the destination of the link, from which readers may proceed to the article.

• The original article remains unchanged, except for a watermark on each page of the PDF indicating that it is “retracted.”

• The HTML version of the document has been removed.

Article Removal: Legal Limitations

In exceptional circumstances, it may be necessary to remove an article from the online database. This occurs only when the content is defamatory, infringes on legal rights, is or is expected to be subject to a court order, or—if acted upon—may pose a serious health risk. In such cases, the article’s metadata (title and authors) is retained, but the text is replaced with a notice stating that the article has been removed for legal reasons.

Article Replacement

If an article is found to contain errors that, if acted upon, could pose a serious health risk, the authors may choose to retract the flawed version and replace it with a corrected version. In such cases, standard retraction procedures are followed, with the distinction that the database retraction notice includes a link to the corrected, republished article along with a documented revision history.

Reference: Adapted from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Retraction Guidelines (Version 3, 2025).