Correcting the Literature

Peer review is of utmost importance in the scholarly publishing ecosystem because it ensures that research results have undergone careful scrutiny by other experts in a given field.  It encourages authors to submit for consideration only high-quality research in the spirit of advancing the field and helps to maintain scientific integrity.  Whether as a result of honest error or scientific misconduct however, it sometimes becomes necessary to correct the published literature.

There are several ways that journals make updates to the literature depending on the severity and reason for the change.

Optica Publishing Group policy and workflow for literature corrections describes how we preserve the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record and under what circumstances we make changes to articles after they have been published online.