RETRACTED: High performance polymeric flocculants based on modified polysaccharides-Microwave assisted synthesis.

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief. Panels PAM, SAG and CMS-g-PAM (M) of Figure 1 do not appear to be original. Panel PAM from Figure 1 appears similar to panel PAM from Figure 4b of the article “Microwave assisted synthesis of polyacrylamide grafted dextrin (Dxt-g-PAM): Development and application of a novel polymeric flocculant” that some of the authors et al have previously published in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules 47 (2010) 623-631 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2010.08.009, and panel PAM from Figure 2b of the article “A novel polymeric flocculant based on polyacrylamide grafted carboxymethylstarch” that most of the authors et al have previously published in Carbohydrate Polymers 77 (2009) 822-831 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2009.03.007. Panels SAG and SAG-g-PAM (M) from Figure 1 appear similar to panels SAG and SAG-g-PAM 6 from Figure 7 of the article “Microwave-initiated synthesis of polyacrylamide grafted sodium alginate: Synthesis and characterization” that first two authors et al have previously published in the Journal of Applied Polymer Science 115 (2010) 63-71 https://doi.org/10.1002/app.30596. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication is that authors declare explicitly that the paper has not been previously published and is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Re-use of any data should be appropriately cited. As such this article represents a misuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.