Corrections to Published Articles
Date: 15/03/2022
If a significant error affects a small portion of an otherwise reliable article, the editors of the Journal of Health Monitoring (JoHM) will decide whether a correction should be published. In particular, this applies to errors that have arisen inadvertently when drawing up the manuscript (honest error) or during editorial work.
The JoHM follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals) published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE):
- The JoHM will publish a correction notice on the article’s website as soon as possible.
- The JoHM will publish a new article version in a timely manner, with details of the changes from the original version and the date on which the changes were made.
- The revised article will receive a new Digital Object Identifier (DOI). The original article will remain available via the old DOI.
- In addition, a correction article with its own DOI is created, describing the changes, stating the date of the change and referring to the updated version.
- The original article will contain a note in a prominent place stating that a more recent version is available.
- Only the most recent version should be cited.
The editors of the JoHM apply the following criteria to decide whether an error justifies the publication of a correction. Significant errors that usually result in a correction are:
- Errors in authorship (e.g. erroneous, missing or falsely named authors)
- Errors in data (e.g. errors in data analysis or layout)
- Missing sections of the text, tables or figures
- Errors in table or figure headings
- Plagiarism of shorter text sections
- Conflicts of interest that are disclosed after publication
Examples of errors that are not generally considered significant and that do not justify correction are:
- Typographical errors or grammatical errors that do not affect the results or conclusions
- Changes requested by authors to formulations that do not affect the results or conclusions
- Formatting errors in the layout
- Errors in the bibliography
Corrections due to incorrect manuscripts are referred to as corrigenda. Corrections resulting from mistakes made during editorial work are referred to as errata.
Errors serious enough to invalidate a paper’s results and conclusions may require retraction. Should a serious error be judged to have been unintentional, the article can be republished once it has been revised, peer reviewed, carefully edited and has undergone quality assurance. The revised article will be accompanied by an explanation and an appendix detailing the extent of the changes that have been made to ensure full transparency.