Retraction: Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric testing of the

RETRACTION

Retraction: Cross-cultural adaptation and

psychometric testing of the Arabic version of

the Modified Low Back Pain Disability

Questionnaire

Hamad S. Al Amer, Fahad Alanazi, Mohamed ELdesoky, Ayman Honin, the PLOS ONE

Editors

Following publication of this article [1], it came to light that some of the content cannot be

offered under the CC BY license used by PLOS journals.

The article [1] reports a translation of the Modified Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire

published in 2001 (referred to hereafter as MLBPDQ) [2, 3]. The MLBPDQ [2, 3] was origi-

nally modified from the Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire [4], which is

licensed to the MAPI Trust [5].

A Correction to [2] published in 2008 [3] replaces Appendix 1 (the modified questionnaire)

and amends the copyright and permission information associated with Appendix 1. At the

time of publication of the PLOS ONE article [1], there was no notification on the web page for

article [2] that a Correction had been published.

The authors of this article [1] have provided documentation to the PLOS ONE Editors to

support that they took steps to request permission to publish a translated version of the modi-

fied questionnaire prior to publication of this article [1], including correspondence with the

MAPI Trust and with RightsLink/Oxford University Press, which publishes PTJ on behalf of

the American Physical Therapy Association. The corresponding author indicated that they

were not aware of the correction to the MLBPDQ article [3] until after publication of [1]. In

light of the Correction [3], the authors have made a revised permission request, but have been

unable to obtain permission to include the translated modified questionnaire under the CC

BY license.

In light of the removal of content that is not compatible with the CC BY license, the authors

and the PLOS ONE Editors retract this article because it no longer meets the journal’s publica-

tion criteria.

The PLOS ONE Editors regret that this issue was not identified and resolved prior to publi-

cation and appreciate the efforts of the authors to address the concerns during the course of

our follow up on this matter.

All authors agreed with retraction and stand by the article’s findings.

At the time of retraction, the Supporting Information files containing the translated

MLBPDQ and S1 Table, are removed from the article. Furthermore, the retracted article has

been amended throughout to remove the terms “Oswestry” and “MODQ” in reference to the

Modified Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire [2–3] and its translation, including amend-

ment to the title and citation, removal of Figs 1–3, and removal of the peer review history. The

article’s Data Availability statement and in-text citations of the relevant files have also been

updated to reflect these changes.

PLOS ONE

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a1111111111

OPEN ACCESS

Citation: Al Amer HS, Alanazi F, ELdesoky M,

Honin A, the PLOS ONE Editors (2022) Retraction:

Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric testing

of the Arabic version of the Modified Low Back

Pain Disability Questionnaire. PLoS ONE 17(6):

e0268665. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.

pone.0268665

Published: June 9, 2022

access article distributed under the terms of the

Creative Commons Attribution License, which

permits unrestricted use, distribution, and

reproduction in any medium, provided the original

author and source are credited.

References

1. Al Amer HS, Alanazi F, ELdesoky M, Honin A (2020) Cross-cultural adaptation and psychometric test-

ing of the Arabic version of the Modified Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire. PLoS ONE

15(4): e0231382. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231382 PMID: 32267896

2. Fritz JM, Irrgang JJ. A comparison of a modified Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire and

the Quebec Back Pain Disability Scale. Phys Ther. 2001; 81(2):776–788. https://doi.org/10.1093/ptj/81.

2.776 PMID: 11175676

3. “A comparison of a modified Oswestry. . .” Fritz and Irrgang. Phys Ther. 2001;81:776–788. Physical

Therapy, Volume 88, Issue 1, 1 January 2008, Pages 138–139, https://doi.org/10.2522/ptj.2001.81.2.

776.cx

4. Fairbank JC, Couper J, Davies JB, O’Brien JP. The Oswestry Low Back Pain Disability Questionnaire.

Physiotherapy. 1980; 66(8):271–273. PMID: 6450426

5. https://eprovide.mapi-trust.org/instruments/oswestry-disability-index

PLOS ONE

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