When an article in an online companion to a law review — or, for that matter, an entirely online law review — contains an error, how should the correction be noted?
I’m inclined to say that it should at least be marked in the body of the text, right where the error is. That way, people who will read the article in the future will see the correct answer (as well as seeing the original, which is important if the original version has already been cited elsewhere). For quick changes of small glitches, it might be acceptable to make the correction without noting it, though that’s probably not optimal in an edited article that is meant as a scholarly work (as opposed to an unedited blog post that is generally just seen as an off-the-cuff comment).
A correction at the end of the article — and especially in the comments after the article — without any correction to the error in the body of the piece, strikes me as insufficient, because many readers won’t get to the end. But am I mistaken on this?
This very issue came up recently. I don’t want to name the journal or too many details; the editors seem to be students who are trying to do the right thing, and though I disagree with them I don’t think it’s necessary to unduly personalize this. But here’s what roughly happened:
1. An online law review supplement posted a short student-written article about a pending case. The article summarized the case and the issues it raises, analyzed the results so far, and made a recommendation for what should happen.
2. The same day, someone e-mailed me about the article; I read it with interest, and noticed a factual error. The error did not affect the overall reasoning, but it did alter the bottom-line recommendation. (The article suggested that its reasoning counseled in favor of a remand for more factfinding; with the error corrected, the reasoning would counsel in favor of an outright reversal.)
3. I e-mailed the journal, and to its credit it fairly quickly (in 5 days) posted a comment following the article acknowledging the error, and acknowledging that outright reversal is the proper result. (There is thus no controversy about whether the original article was indeed in error; how a journal should deal with such controversies is a separate question.)
4. But the journal concluded that it should not correct the error in place. Here was its explanation, which I quote in relevant part with the journal’s permission:
We think that not allowing changes to the body of the article is the best policy given our hopes and wishes for the [online companion]. We consider the [online companion] an extension of our print journal; it is sort of an online companion. And like with our print journal, we truly hope that lawyers and scholars cite to our website’s articles (if you look, you will see that we do provide a citation format). Further, we feel that if the articles are changed after publication, even to correct errors, readers will be hesitant to cite to the journal. For this reason, we have decided that any corrections will have to be mentioned in the comments section, rather than in the body of the article. We think this is sufficient because readers who go to the article from the home page will notice that the link to the full article states that there are comments; thus, readers should notice them.
Further, we are currently in the process of sending our articles to electronic databases such as Lexis and Westlaw. Once we send it to them, incorporating changes after that point would be a major headache. While we surely could still incorporate changes on our site, this would lead to inconsistencies between what is on our site and theirs. And again, we think that this would frustrate our vision for the [online companion] as a source that authors can cite to with confidence.
Finally, with regards to the error in the [specific] article. While it is true that a correction of the error would make clear that remand is not necessary, the correction would not affect the [substantive] theory of the article…. Since the underlying theory is not affected by the error, we feel that the error is not so egregious as to warrant the unprecedented action of altering an already published article….
[This] was a difficult decision to make because while people are unlikely to cite to an article that is subject to change, they are also unlikely to cite to an article that may contain errors. We ultimately decided that finality was most important to us because while errors will occur from time to time, we do our best to make sure they are extremely rare.
I appreciate the journal’s considering the question, but I think it came to the wrong answer. A comment is not adequate warning of the error, because many people won’t look at the comments: They’ll often just read the portion of the article that they’re interested in, and even if they read the article from beginning to end, they might not go further and read the comments as well. Plus I take it that the comments will not make their way into the Lexis/Westlaw version of the article.
Nor is there anything wrong with “altering an already published article,” if the technology allows it. Of course, the alteration should be noted — but that’s easy to do.
And the Lexis/Westlaw submission question is irrelevant, too. If the error is detected before the article is sent to Lexis/Westlaw (which apparently happened here), then the error can be corrected both on the law review’s own site and in the Lexis/Westlaw version. But if it’s detected afterwards, and Lexis/Westlaw refuses to make the correction, at least it’s better for the correction to be made (and, again, specially noted) in one place than in no place (except the likely rarely read comments).
More broadly, I think the guiding principle here should be: Get things right, or make things right. If a scholarly journal knows something on its site is incorrect, in a material way, that should be corrected. The desire to keep the text stable, while understandable, should be a much less important consideration than the desire to correct errors — especially since making the change but noting what the original said can give the best of both worlds.