Retraction notice: The effect of global reporting initiative guidelines on classification shifting: the mediating role of shareholder protection score

The publisher of International Journal of Accounting and Information Management wishes to retract the article Khlifi, S. and Zalila, M. (2026), “The effect of Global Reporting Initiative guidelines on classification shifting: the mediating role of shareholder protection score”. International Journal of Accounting and Information Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. Link to the cited article. It has come to our attention that there are significant methodological and reporting errors and inconsistencies present within the article that affect how the findings should be interpreted. As part of an investigation into these concerns, the authors were requested to provide a copy of the data so that the editorial team could verify the findings. The authors cooperated fully with the investigation, were not found to be involved in any malpractice, and provided suitable raw data consistent with the descriptive statistics and model structure, but were unable to address the discrepancies satisfactorily within the scope of a corrigendum. As a result of these extensive reporting concerns, the findings of the article cannot be relied upon. The decision to retract has been informed by COPE’s guidelines on retractions and Emerald’s publishing ethics. The publisher of the journal sincerely apologizes to the readers.