We, the Editor and Publisher of the journal Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, have retracted the following article:
T. N. Govindaiah & H. R. Sreepad (2015) Phase Transition Behavior of Smectic Phases in Binary Mixture of Liquid Crystals, Molecular Crystals and Liquid Crystals, 616:1, 1–6, DOI: 10.1080/15421406.2014.963296
Since publication, significant concerns have been raised about the integrity of the data. Evidence of this was revealed when images in Figures 3a and 3 b were found to have been duplicated with those from other articles, from the same authors, but used to describe results from different studies investigating different compounds.
A thorough investigation was carried out and when approached for an explanation, the authors were unable to provide the requested supporting information which would verify the integrity of the published findings. As verifying the validity of published work is core to the integrity of the scholarly record, we are therefore retracting the article and the authors were notified of this.
We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions.
The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as ‘Retracted’.