Retraction notice to “Design and applications of photobioreactors – A review” [Bioresour. Technol. 349 (2022) 126858] (Bioresource Technology (2022) 349, (S0960852422001870), (10.1016/j.biortech.2022.126858))

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of Elsevier's Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics team and an independent ethics advisor.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 recent record of collaboration, including co-publication, with four of the paper co-authors (Mukesh Kumar Awasthi, Ranjna Sirohi, Sang Hyoun Kim, Anh Tuan Hoang). Acceptance of the article was partly based upon the positive advice of a reviewer who was closely linked to two of the authors (Sirohi, Awasthi) and to the Editor-in-Chief, and of another reviewer who was co-authoring an article with Sirohi while this paper was under consideration. 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.