Mahato Susanta, Kundu Sonali, Cermak Jan, Joshi P K
Department of General and Applied Geography, School of Applied Sciences, Dr. Harisingh Gour Vishwavidyalaya, Sagar, 470003, Madhya Pradesh, India.
Department of Geography, Institute of Science, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, 221005, India.
Chemosphere. 2025 May;377:144353. doi: 10.1016/j.chemosphere.2025.144353. Epub 2025 Apr 9.
This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier policy on article withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies-and-standards/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editors. The journal was contacted by Jan Cermak who informed us that he had not consented to the submission of this paper and should not be listed as an author as he made no meaningful contribution to it and that, therefore, his role as documented in the article's 'sCRediT authorship contribution statement's is incorrect. The corresponding author, Susanta Mahato, was contacted about these concerns and provided various items of documentation regarding a visit to Professor Cermak'ss lab from May to July 2024 and an email to Professor Cermak making him aware of a manuscript that was in preparation. However, none of this documentation provided any evidence that Professor Cermak had consented to be an author of the manuscript. It was also discovered that Mahato had provided an incorrect email address for Cermak during the submission process. Authors Joshi and Kindu confirmed that they had consented to submission, although author Joshi indicated that the email address provided by Mahato during the submission process was also incorrect. The Editors have therefore lost confidence in the contributions of the authors presented in this article as a whole, and are retracting it.