Retraction note to four articles published in World Journal of Orthopaedics.

[This retracts the article on p. 26 in vol. 1, PMID: 22474624.][This retracts the article on p. 37 in vol. 2, PMID: 22474634.][This retracts the article on p. 7 in vol. 2, PMID: 22474626.][This retracts the article on p. 316 in vol. 4, PMID: 24147269.].

RETRACTION NOTE

Retraction Note to four articles published in World Journal of Orthopaedics: (1) Iwamoto J, Sato Y, Takeda T, Matsumoto H. Return to sports activity by athletes after treatment of spondylolysis. World J Orthop 2010; 1(1): 26-30 PMID: 22474624 DOI: 10.5312/wjo.v1.i1.26; (2) Iwamoto J, Sato Y, Takeda T, Matsumoto H. Effectiveness of exercise for osteoarthritis of the knee: A review of the literature. World J Orthop 2011; 2(5): 37-42 PMID: 22474634 DOI: 10.5312/wjo.v2.i5.37; (3) Iwamoto J, Sato Y, Takeda T, Matsumoto H. Analysis of stress fractures in athletes based on our clinical experience. World J Orthop 2011; 2(1): 7-12 PMID: 22474626 DOI: 10.5312/wjo.v2.i1.7; and (4) Iwamoto J, Takada T, Sato Y, Matsumoto H. Effect of risedronate on speed of sound in postmenopausal women with osteoporosis. World J Orthop 2013; 4(4): 316-322 PMID: 24147269 DOI: 10.5312/wjo.v4.i4.316.

These articles[1-4] have been retracted at the request of the Editors-in-Chief as misconduct over authorship of the paper was detected and confirmed.

The Editors-in-Chief recently received communications concerning about the misconduct over the authorship and the integrity of the study. Editorial Office has conducted an investigation and has contacted the authors concerning the allegation. Evidence obtained by the Editorial Office including authors’ statements confirmed the misconduct by the authors. One of the conditions of submission of a paper for publication in the journal is that authors declare that all authors must meet authorship criteria. As such these articles represent an abuse of the scientific publishing system. The Editors-in-Chief take 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.​