How to deal with my own sloppy research published when I was an undergrad?

Question

I am a grad student in computer science. Having read many research papers and having worked with an adviser has made me much more aware about best practices concerning presentation and reporting of results in published research.

I have also published a paper when I was a junior in college. Looking back at it now (its been around 2-3 years), compared to the standards set by papers I have read, my work is very sloppy.

More specifically, I have typos in one or two places and an equation is incorrect (I maximize for x when I should be maximizing for x and y). Also, my evaluation is based on very little data (though I do point out that it is very preliminary and further evaluation is needed) and the metrics I have used to evaluate the described technique do not adequately demonstrate that my method is correct or better performing. The evaluation was added after the reviewer comments and therefore was not checked.

Typos aside, as an undergrad, I was ignorant about best practices when it came to reporting results in that specific area. This is partly because me and a friend of mine wrote the paper over the summer without any involvement from our university or professors (I am not making excuses and I do hold myself accountable for these mistakes).

The paper is rather embarrassing since it does not really represent a significant step forward and is presented very sloppily. I love research (I'm planning a career in research) and I feel that it does not accurately reflect my current research rigor. I don't like it showing up in search results associated with my name.

What would you suggest is the best way to deal with this situation? I'm most worried (been stressing about retractions and the like...) by my lack of sufficient data and invalid metrics, as well as the possibility of future employers seeing it.

Note: I just want to point out that I do not believe that the core idea of the paper is wrong, but the way it is presented along with its evaluation. It's also been cited a few times (I fully understand that this is no guarantee of validity).

Answer 1

Just don't worry about it, and keep doing your current good work.

It's pretty cool that you were able to publish a paper at all as an undergraduate. Anybody who notices your old paper will primarily notice that. The sloppiness will reflect much more on your senior co-authors (who should have been expected to know better, and educate you likewise) than yourself. And if you didn't have much more experienced co-authors, so much more cool and understandable.

Do good work now, and the sloppiness of your undergraduate paper will simply fade into insignificance.

Answer 2

First of all, your situation is not so unusual: in fields where student-only publications are common (like mathematics and some branches of CS), a lot of academics have one or two publications from their undergraduate days. These publications are virtually guaranteed to be significantly worse than all of their other publications. If you don't believe it, consider the logically equivalent form: "It is virtually guaranteed that the time you spend in a graduate program will significantly improve the research you do and publish."

I think a lot of people are vaguely embarrassed by their undergraduate publications: e.g. in mathematics most undergrad-only publications are in unusually undergrad-accessible fields like graph theory. But then a majority of pure mathematicians go on to study and work in much fancier fields and even (unfortunately, to be sure) to look down upon these areas. But although undergraduate publications can be embarrassing compared to later publications, they are impressive when compared to other undergraduates: a student-only undergraduate publication puts you at the head of the class.

For your paper in particular you sound more embarrassed by some slipshod details than by the work as a whole. It also sounds like you received some subpar refereeing and editorial work: in particular, asking for extra content and then not looking at the extra content is lazy. It can be surprising sometimes what apparently (and even actually, most of the time) reputable journals can publish. (You might think that each paper published in a serious journal would at least have a flawlessly grammatical title. You'd be wrong. But I digress...) What's done is done, but there's a lesson here: assuming that whatever someone else lets you publish is going to make you proud is sometimes an oversimplification and sometimes an outright error.

I would say that for the most part you should just work on feeling good rather than bad about this. The one thing that may be worth actual action on your part is making clear to interested parties that this was an undergraduate publication. There are some obvious clues to this for those who look. In my field (mathematics), up until very recently a majority of graduate students did not publish papers, so it's rather common to see gaps of approximately five years between a mathematician's first publication and all later publications. Even a gap of a few years followed by a steady stream of publication creates that impression. You should certainly have a webpage, that webpage should certainly have a CV, and that CV should certainly clearly demarcate your undergraduate years. If you feel strongly enough about it, you could list that paper separately on your webpage / CV / publication list in a category called "Undergraduate Papers".

Afterthought: if you think the flaws in your paper will cause trouble to researchers in the field, perhaps fixing the paper in some way might be in order. You could post an edited version of the paper on your webpage, and if someone cites the paper you could refer them there. But ask a more experienced academic before you do this to get a sense of whether it's really necessary.

Answer 3

Write an erratum (it is mostly the wrong equation you have to worry about, the typos I am afraid you will have to live with except where the materially affect the meaning or intelligibility of the sentence). Email the erratum to the editor of the journal with a polite request that it be ran.

(These online days the erratum can be placed alongside your paper. There are some reasons to do with integrity of archival material that mean you will not be allowed to change the published online version, unless it is one of those hyper modern journals that explicitly countenances "versions".)

I published a paper when I was an undergrad! And I discovered an error when it was in print. I came clean with the editor and the corrected version could be published as the first and only version. I am still quite happy with the paper.