Retraction: Zheng, T. et al. Effect of Heat Leak and Finite Thermal Capacity on the Optimal Configuration of a Two-Heat-Reservoir Heat Engine for Another Linear Heat Transfer Law. Entropy 2003, 5, 519–530

The editors were recently made aware that a paper published in Entropy in 2003 [1] exhibited characteristics of duplication and self-plagiarism. After investigating the matter, and discussing the situation with the authors, they have offered to retract this paper.

In particular, authors reused parts of their previous publications that appeared in Open Systems & Information Dynamics [2], Applied Thermal Engineering [3] and Energy Conversion and Management [4]. Similar text parts have been duplicated in several other publications by the same authors [5,6]. The editors are therefore not sure if the above referenced publications [2–4] are the original sources of the text. Further, during our investigation we found at least one instance where the authors recycled original text parts from the Entropy paper [1] as well as from their paper [2] in a subsequent publication [7]. It should be noted that although there was text copied from several of the research group’s earlier papers, the specific research problem and approach was unique.

According to Google Scholar the paper published in Entropy has been cited 9 times as of 24 March 2014. The editors would like to apologize to the readers of the journal, as well as the journals hosting the source manuscripts. We sincerely appreciate the efforts of anyone who brings matters of plagiarism to our attention in an effort to maintain academic integrity.