Articles that have been published shall remain extant, exact and unaltered as long as it is possible. However, very occasionally, circumstances may arise where an article is published that must later be withdrawn. The main reason for withdrawal is to correct the mistake while preserving the integrity of science; it is not to punish the author.

Legal limitations of the publisher, copyright holder or author(s), infringements of professional ethical codes, such as multiple submissions, bogus claims of authorship, plagiarism, fraudulent use of data or the like require withdrawal or retraction of an article. Occasionally a withdrawal can be used to correct errors in submission or publication.

Standards for dealing with withdrawals or retractions have been developed by a number of library and scholarly bodies, and this practice has been adopted for article withdrawal or retraction by Journal of the Serbian Chemical Society: in the electronic version of the withdrawal (retraction) note, a link is made to the original article. In the electronic version of the original article, a link is made to the withdrawal (retraction) note where it is clearly stated that the article has been withdrawn (retracted). The original article is retained unchanged; save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it is "withdrawn" or "retracted."