Correcting the Record: Post-Publication Corrections and the Integrity of Legal Scholarship

Abstract

In the age of electronic publications, post-publication correction of errors in law journal articles may seem like a simple, technical matter. Unfortunately, a lack of standardized practices or policies related to errors discovered after publication has allowed multiple versions of articles to co-exist and retracted or plagiarizing articles to remain unnoted. An examination of a sampling of articles with publication errors highlights the need for a uniform system to allow readers to know which version of an article is the most current and correct, what changes have been made to corrected articles, and whether other, even more serious, problems were discovered. After reviewing the scope of the problem, the article suggests policies and practices law journals should adopt to preserve the integrity of the scholarship they publish and ways that law journals could work together to provide a uniform solution.

Keywords: law journals, law reviews, legal publishing, errata, scholarly integrity