In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
How often do you all notice small mistakes in your published work? I have recently noticed one or two mistakes that rise above the level of a typo, but don't really ruin the rest of my article. As an example, I mistranslated a word and emphasized the word that was mistranslated. Another example in another article: I mistakenly characterized a potential identity between concepts in a footnote ("Most people think X, DESCRIPTOR Y, is the same thing as Z, DESCRIPTOR W." W and Y should be switched.) Ultimately, neither matters for the broader argument of the articles, but it just makes me feel like an amateur. It's especially annoying because I feel like if I had just put a little more care and attention into my work, I could have avoided this.
Any advice for dealing with such issues? Should I just accept that this is going to happen?
Good questions! I take it that most of us have published things with minor mistakes (not to mention some non-minor ones). It doesn't help much, I think, that publishers often give authors something like 48 hours to proof articles (and in some cases, entire books). I'll never forget that this once happened to me over Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. I was on holiday with family, and my publisher emailed me in the middle of the holiday to let me know that my proofs must be completed within a couple of days. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy--and what do you know: the final published manuscript ended up having several significant editing errors. Anyway, mistakes happen. The question is how to best handle them. One reader submitted the following reply:
What is done is done. But in the future, you need to take greater care with checking proofs, and making corrections. The trouble is that some people will read your paper and think you are careless - for example, if you use it for a writing sample, for a job application. And if it is happening in every paper you publish, then you really are careless. What you should do is have someone else also read your proofs - pay someone to do it. It is well worth it.
This is good advice, as mistakes can (and probably should) lead one to take greater care. One thing I've found to be helpful is simply finding a second reader (e.g. a friend) to read the manuscript over if you can't pay someone. Oftentimes, I've found that outside readers catch things that I've missed, as it's easier to catch mistakes in things that others have written than in your own work. Aside from this and taking more care, there are I think two other things one can do. You can always post (or even publish) an erratum notice that formally notes and corrects the error(s) in the published work. I've seen journals do this on occasion. And, of course, if the error is non-trivial (i.e. substantive), you can always note it and correct it in future published work. I've done both of these things. While correcting errors after the fact is in a fairly obvious sense suboptimal (it would be better not to err in the first place), we are all human and mistakes are inevitable, even with the greatest levels of care.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?
Some journals will allow you to correct the published article if it's still online only and hasn't gone to press. Others will only publish an erratum and will not correct the article itself. You can ask the journal editor. I think if you can get the actual article corrected, then it's worth it. I wouldn't bother with just doing an erratum though for such small mistakes.
When I was in philosophy I worked very hard to ensure my published work didn't have mistakes, even simple typos. I don't think I ever succeeded. But new copies of Lord of The Rings still have typos. You can't win. The goal should be to keep mistakes to a minimum, not to eliminate them. Little mistakes in a footnote probably don't matter, and most likely only a couple people in the entire world will notice the mistakes anyway.
Posted by: Pendaran | 06/08/2021 at 09:47 AM
My main thought on this is that more publishers should invest the money they make from university libraries into hiring proper copyeditors and proofreaders, as trade presses do. It's just another bit of free labour researchers give to academic publishers that is better done by someone with the specific training for catching these kinds of slip-ups, not to mention the paid time to do it. Moreover, there is no substitute for a fresh reader when it comes to catching mistakes. The occasions when I've gotten actual copyediting notes back from a publisher when checking proofs have been few, but always helpful — except in the case where the publisher used a natural language model instead of a human being, which introduced more errors than it caught.
Posted by: Trystan Goetze | 06/08/2021 at 10:20 AM
I called MP and MT one-premise inferences in a paper. Whoops. I know better, obviously!
Oh well. You just have to grit your teeth and move on.
Posted by: Michel | 06/08/2021 at 04:11 PM
I suspect the best thing to do is to be laid back about possibility of error but perfectionistic in efforts to preempt it!
Posted by: TT prof | 06/08/2021 at 06:55 PM
How do we get journals to change their norms so that they don't expect ridiculously fast turn-around times on proofs? It might not take me 48 or 72 hours to proof a paper, but I might not be able to do it within the 48-72 hours allotted to me to do it. Yes, I have at times pushed back and proposed an alternate deadline. But it is obscene to expect people to drop everything or fit it into these turn-around times and do a good job.
I recently had a paper accepted to a journal that had an AMAZING copy-editor on staff and caught not only errors, but made my paper significantly better. I definitely will be submitting there again.
Most of the time figuring out systems on the front end that work for you is best: A staff member in my department will provide proofing support to me if their schedule permits and as often as possible I ask their help for an extra set of eyes. Working with co-authors can also be helpful for extra-eyes on something even if you are the corresponding author ultimately responsible for the proofs.
But maybe recognizing that we should only hope others read our work closely enough to catch these errors themselves, and if they do, we should be so lucky to have attentive readers?
Posted by: Assistant Professor | 06/11/2021 at 10:43 AM