The editor-in-chief and publisher have retracted this article in agreement with the author. The article was simultaneously submitted to and published online in Computing [DOI 10.1007/s00607-017-0565-6, Natarajan Meghanathan, A distance vector similarity metric for complex networks] and Journal of King Saud University – Computer and Information Sciences [DOI 10.1016/j.jksuci.2017.06.007, Natarajan Meghanathan, Decay centrality-based distance vector similarity (DIVES) metric for complex networks]. The online version of this article contains the full text of the retracted article as electronic supplementary material.