AB230. SOH21AS068. Errata in the OHNS literature

Background: The publication of corrigenda is a regular phenomenon in medical journals. There is a grey area between author and administrative responsibility for these errors in the first place but also in relation to whether they are of technical or scientific significance. We base our interrogation on a rejected letter to the editor of a peer-review journal highlighting three separate errors of citation of an individual article by a group of authors in two separate publications. The editorial decision was to deny publication of the letter but to categorise the content as an erratum instead. The aim of our study was to review the frequency of errata or corrigenda in the OHNS literature and present an analysis of the results.

Methods: Twelve of the international peer-review journals in OHNS that are accessible though our institutional online resources were searched for publications on an erratum or a corrigendum. The search engines of each specific journal were used to identify the articles and each one was reviewed for content.

Results: All journals had relevant publications ranging from 6–74 dependent on the years that were available to us. Some had letters and corrigenda on the same subject. Most were errors of authors’ names or initials and only some were corrections of scientific content.

Conclusions: Technical errors by journal administration or authors should be confined to errata or corrigenda but any form of mistake on scientific validity deserves a more robust and targeted response with greater emphasis either by way of an editorial or letter attached to the specific erroneous article.

Keywords: Erratum; corrigenda; medical; publication; otorhinolaryngology