In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
How often do you all notice small mistakes in your published work? I have recently noticed one or two mistakes that rise above the level of a typo, but don't really ruin the rest of my article. As an example, I mistranslated a word and emphasized the word that was mistranslated. Another example in another article: I mistakenly characterized a potential identity between concepts in a footnote ("Most people think X, DESCRIPTOR Y, is the same thing as Z, DESCRIPTOR W." W and Y should be switched.) Ultimately, neither matters for the broader argument of the articles, but it just makes me feel like an amateur. It's especially annoying because I feel like if I had just put a little more care and attention into my work, I could have avoided this.
Any advice for dealing with such issues? Should I just accept that this is going to happen?
Good questions! I take it that most of us have published things with minor mistakes (not to mention some non-minor ones). It doesn't help much, I think, that publishers often give authors something like 48 hours to proof articles (and in some cases, entire books). I'll never forget that this once happened to me over Thanksgiving holiday here in the US. I was on holiday with family, and my publisher emailed me in the middle of the holiday to let me know that my proofs must be completed within a couple of days. Needless to say, I wasn't very happy–and what do you know: the final published manuscript ended up having several significant editing errors. Anyway, mistakes happen. The question is how to best handle them. One reader submitted the following reply:
What is done is done. But in the future, you need to take greater care with checking proofs, and making corrections. The trouble is that some people will read your paper and think you are careless – for example, if you use it for a writing sample, for a job application. And if it is happening in every paper you publish, then you really are careless. What you should do is have someone else also read your proofs – pay someone to do it. It is well worth it.
This is good advice, as mistakes can (and probably should) lead one to take greater care. One thing I've found to be helpful is simply finding a second reader (e.g. a friend) to read the manuscript over if you can't pay someone. Oftentimes, I've found that outside readers catch things that I've missed, as it's easier to catch mistakes in things that others have written than in your own work. Aside from this and taking more care, there are I think two other things one can do. You can always post (or even publish) an erratum notice that formally notes and corrects the error(s) in the published work. I've seen journals do this on occasion. And, of course, if the error is non-trivial (i.e. substantive), you can always note it and correct it in future published work. I've done both of these things. While correcting errors after the fact is in a fairly obvious sense suboptimal (it would be better not to err in the first place), we are all human and mistakes are inevitable, even with the greatest levels of care.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?
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