The integrity of science could be threatened by publishers changing scientific papers after they have been published – but without making any formal public notification. That’s the verdict of a new study by an international team of researchers, who coin such changes “stealth corrections”. They want publishers to publicly log all changes that are made to published scientific research (Learned Publishing 38 e1660).
When corrections are made to a paper after publication, it is standard practice for a notice to be added to the article explaining what has been changed and why. This transparent record keeping is designed to retain trust in the scientific record. But last year, René Aquarius, a neurosurgery researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, noticed this does not always happen.
After spotting an issue with an image in a published paper, he raised concerns with the authors, who acknowledged the concerns and stated that they were “checking the original data to figure out the problem” and would keep him updated. However, Aquarius was surprised to see that the figure had been updated a month later, but without a correction notice stating that the paper had been changed.
Teaming up with colleagues from Belgium, France, the UK and the US, Aquarius began to identify and document similar stealth corrections. They did so by recording instances that they and other “science sleuths” had already found and by searching online for for terms such as “no erratum”, “no corrigendum” and “stealth” on PubPeer – an online platform where users discuss and review scientific publications.
Sustained vigilance
The researchers define a stealth correction as at least one post-publication change being made to a scientific article that does not provide a correction note or any other indicator that the publication has been temporarily or permanently altered. The researchers identified 131 stealth corrections spread across 10 scientific publishers and in different fields of research. In 92 of the cases, the stealth correction involved a change in the content of the article, such as to figures, data or text.
The remaining unrecorded changes covered three categories: “author information” such as the addition of authors or changes in affiliation; “additional information”, including edits to ethics and conflict of interest statements; and “the record of editorial process”, for instance alterations to editor details and publication dates. “For most cases, we think that the issue was big enough to have a correction notice that informs the readers what was happening,” Aquarius says.
‘Hidden’ citations conceal the true impact of scientific research
After the authors began drawing attention to the stealth corrections, five of the papers received an official correction notice, nine were given expressions of concern, 17 reverted to the original version and 11 were retracted. Aquarius says he believes it is “important” that reader knows what has happened to a paper “so they can make up their own mind whether they want to trust [it] or not”.
The researchers would now like to see publishers implementing online correction logs that make it impossible to change anything in a published article without it being transparently reported, however small the edit. They also say that clearer definitions and guidelines are required concerning what constitutes a correction and needs a correction notice.
“We need to have sustained vigilance in the scientific community to spot these stealth corrections and also register them publicly, for example on PubPeer,” Aquarius says.
