Reply from the Editorial Office of Zoological Research(ZR)

Recently,theZREditorial Office received a statement from Dr.Shih-Pin Huang regarding his affiliation with a recent publication (Sun et al.,2022).He requested that his authorship be removed from this article (see below).This is the second time thatZRhas encountered this issue in the past four decades of publication,whereby an author requests the retraction of his/her name from the author list,while the remaining authors support the validity of the paper,as we reported previously (Zoological ResearchEditorial Office,2016).The Editorial Office considers this a serious issue and has conducted in-depth discussions with the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editors-in-Chief.As the new species reported in Sun et al.(2022),Microphysogobio oujiangensis,is valid and conforms to the Nomenclatural Acts Registration of new species,the Editorial Office has agreed to the request of Dr.Huang,but has upheld publication of the article with an attribution correction.AlthoughZRhas explicitly stated its adherence to the authorship guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE,2013),and provides clear guidance to authors regarding proper authorship and affiliation in the Instructions to Authors,actual practice still depends on the authors themselves,as clearly stated during the handling of the previous case (Liu,2016).However,to allay any related concerns,we have decided to publish the clarification provided by Dr.Huang,the corresponding reply from the co-authors,and the article correction.

Editorial Office ofZoological Research

Statement from Dr.Shih-Pin Huang

I would like to make a statement regarding the paper “A new species of the gudgeon genusMicrophysogobioMori,1934(Cypriniformes:Cyprinidae) from Zhejiang Province,China”published inZoological Research(Sun et al.,2022).After the paper was published online,I realized my affiliation information did not correspond with the requirements of my institution.I herein request that my authorship be removed from the paper,which has been recognized by all other authors.I offer my apologies to the other authors andZoological Researchfor the inconvenience.

Dr.Shih-Pin Huang

Reply from other authors of the article

As co-authors of the paper “A new species of the gudgeon genusMicrophysogobioMori,1934 (Cypriniformes:Cyprinidae) from Zhejiang Province,China” published inZoological Research(Sun et al.,2022),we all recognize that the second author,Dr.Shih-Pin Huang,has withdrawn his authorship from the paper due to personal reasons.We confirm that the conclusions of this paper remain valid and there is no scientific misconduct or improper preparation of this paper (Sun et al.,2022).We agree with the current sharing of credit and authorship list.

Zhi-Xian Sun1,Bin-Qing Zhu2,Jun Wu2,＊,Ya-Hui Zhao1,＊1Key Laboratory of Zoological Systematics and Evolution,Institute of Zoology,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing,100101,China

2Nanjing Institute of Environmental Sciences,Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China,Nanjing,Jiangsu 210042,China

＊Corresponding authors,E-mail:wujun@nies.org;zhaoyh@ioz.ac.cn