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I am in the field of epidemiology and my paper has recently been accepted for publication (after 2 rounds of revisions). However, I recently noticed some numerical typos affected several figures and tables. These errors do not affect the conclusions, calculations or results. I simply typed in certain values into the tables and figures incorrectly. I have contacted the journal, although in the past they have taken a long time to reply.

Does anyone have experience with this? Is there a chance this paper will be rescinded or would this be an easy fix where I can just resubmit the affected tables / figures ?

The paper has not been published yet. It was accepted for publication about 2 weeks ago.

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  • Probably not rejected as they have invested a bit in it already. But the chance of a fix depends on them. But impossible for anyone but their editor to say.
    – Buffy
    Nov 13, 2020 at 16:20
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    Has the paper completed the copyediting/typesetting process?
    – Bryan Krause
    Nov 13, 2020 at 17:43
  • @Bryan Krause I don't think so. I am a graduate student and this is my first first-author paper submitted for publication. All of the authors on my paper just finished singing the copyright release form. My advisor said they should be contacting me about typesetting to make sure everything is formatted correctly. I have not been contacted about this yet.
    – aspire94
    Nov 13, 2020 at 19:38
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    @aspire94 Then see Allure's answer. Typically you have an opportunity to fix typos and other similar errors before publication. Numerical errors are more problem, but if they don't impact the result you can likely still repair them through this process. It really depends on how substantial the mistakes are. If you are correcting a value 123.54 to 123.45 I wouldn't expect any problem.
    – Bryan Krause
    Nov 13, 2020 at 19:47

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This kind of error won't affect acceptance. Chances are you'll simply get to fix it during copyediting/typesetting. An eagle-eyed production editor might notice you are changing nontrivial aspects of the paper and confirm with the editorial board that the change is OK, but if the error is as simple as you describe, there's nothing to worry about.

If you had noticed this after the publication process is completed, then you'll probably have to issue an erratum/corrigendum.

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