An editor thinks a correction should be posted on the author's website rather than published. Is he sticking to the academic ethics?

Question

I had a casual chat about a famous paper in mathematical economics with an editor of a journal different from where the paper was published. We agree that some of the mathematical results are mistaken.

Later I write to him asking for coauthoring a paper about the mistakes. He said something like:

I feel uncomfortable writing a correction not initiated by the author and I feel a correction should be something posted on the original authors' website (rather than published by someone else).

What I learned from this site is that journals must correct a mistake once it is identified. So I start to feel that the editor's suggestions might not be ethical, even though I thought he was good person. I am unsure of my gut feeling.

Answer 1

Since the "editor" is from a different journal, I think that their statement is perfectly reasonable and there are no ethical issues here. Academic courtesy, perhaps, but not ethics.

There is no real reason that another party can't publish corrections to published work. After all, it is sometimes impossible for the original authors, having died, to do so. It is courteous, however, to give them the opportunity to do so when possible.

Yes, a publisher should publish corrections to their published work, again, when possible, and it is preferable, not essential, that the originators of the correction be the original authors. However, it sometimes happens that corrections, being judged insignificant, aren't published.

You might check again with that "editor" you spoke with and see if their real intent was, not so much the "website" of the authors, but the website of the publishers of the authors. Personal websites often have little impact or visibility.

They were probably correct in that one publisher might be hesitant to "step on the toes" of another by publishing corrections or by participating in writing a correction in such a case. I think you are free to write such a correction if you wish, but ideally it should be more than a simple correction, somehow extending the original paper if possible. But, again, it seems to me to not be a question of ethics, but courtesy and you could just as well inform the authors and suggest a correction. You could even suggest your participation in the writing.

Answer 2

SHORT ANSWER:

• If correcting the mistakes does not change the main results of the "famous paper in mathematical economics", doing so (in the original paper, does not make sense doing so in a separate one) is no more important than correcting typographical errors in it: it will be up to the editor of the journal where it was published (and potentially the authors) to decide whether it is worth it in a "corrected version" (and they might mention you in the acknowledgment part of the new version).

• If correcting the mistakes does change (some of) the main results, trying to "get a paper out of it" without checking with the original authors and/or editors would be awkward and at the border of what is ethically acceptable (in the sense that it fails to promote a good spirit in the community). Unless you are already in conflict with them, it would be only good manners to inform them of the mistakes that you identified and to let you answer privately before announcing such mistakes publicly.

LONGER ANSWER:

• If you believe that you found some mathematical mistakes in "a famous paper in mathematical economics", it might be worth an email with the corresponding author of the article to check that those are indeed mistakes (as opposed to your own misunderstanding). Checking with a friend, whether they are editing another journal or not, is not enough to insure that you are correct in identifying mistakes.

• If the corresponding author is unresponsive, and you are certain of the mistakes, it might be worth contacting the editor of the journal which published the original article and to offer to publish an "errata", which they can point out along with the original article on their website.

• Only if both the authors and the editor of the original article are unresponsive should you consider writing an additional article to point out the mistakes, but even then the editor will consider whether it is worth it, and whether it will be seen as one of those practices from "predatory journals" which aim to maximize their "ranking" as measured by private companies.

• Probably, the authors publishing an errata on their website is not enough, but I do not think that an editor of an unrelated journal proposing it as a reasons not to publish an errata in their own journal to be a failure in ethics: they are probably just being polite mentioning the first alternative which comes to their mind.