Retraction notice: A hybrid whale optimization algorithm based on local search strategy for the permutation flow shop scheduling problem

This article has been retracted: please see Elsevier Policy on Article Withdrawal (https://www.elsevier.com/about/our-business/policies/article-withdrawal). This article has been retracted at the request of the Editor-in-Chief as the reliability of the peer-review process of the article cannot be guaranteed. It was discovered post publication that the Managing Guest Editor of the Special Issue, Gunasekaran Manogaran, was also an author of the article: the version of the paper which was accepted by the Editor-in-Chief used the author name ‘M. Gunasekaran’, but the author was subsequently changed to ‘Gunasekaran Manogaran’. As such this represents an abuse of the scientific publishing system. The scientific community takes a very strong view on this matter and apologies are offered to readers of the journal that this was not detected during the submission process.