This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team and an independent ethics advisor. A journal-wide investigation identified violations of the journal’s policies on authorship and conflict of interest related to the submission and review of this paper. Review of this submission was handled by the then Editor-in-Chief (Ashok Pandey) despite an extensive record of collaboration, including co-publication, with four of the paper co-authors (Binod Parameswaran, Raveendran Sindhu, Mukesh Kumar Awasthi, Mohammad J. Taherzadeh). In addition, authorship changes were made during the revision of this paper; the authors Deepanraj Balakrishnan and M. Mofijur were added to the revised paper without validation or authorisation. There was a significant increase of citations of papers authored by the Editor-in-Chief between the original submission and the revised version. In summary, 3 papers by Pandey were cited in the original version of the paper. This increased to 10 papers in the revised version. Acceptance of the article was partly based upon the positive advice of a reviewer who was closely linked to one of the authors (Awasthi). This compromised the editorial process and breached the journal’s policies. This investigation was carried out by Elsevier’s Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team, independent of the journal editorial board. The findings and recommendations have been confirmed by an independent ethics advisor. The authors disagree with the retraction and dispute the grounds for it. © 2025 Elsevier Ltd
