A formal post-publication notice that amends an error in a published article without invalidating its overall conclusions. A correction is appropriate when the error is bounded and the central findings remain reliable; a retraction is appropriate when the conclusions are unreliable.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A corrigendum updating the affiliation of one author and a transposed digit in a sample-size figure, with no change to the conclusions.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
An article whose central claim is shown to rest on fabricated data, which would require retraction, not correction.

Editorial commentary

Conventionally, 'corrigendum' denotes an author-originated correction and 'erratum' denotes a publisher-originated correction, though many journals use the terms interchangeably. The correction is linked bidirectionally to the original article in CrossRef metadata so that readers and indexers always see both. COPE provides guidance on the threshold between correction and retraction, with the operative question being whether a corrected reader would draw materially different conclusions.

References

COPE Retraction Guidelines (2019)
NLM PubMed correction policies (current edition)

Also known as

corrigendum · erratum · correction notice

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Correction (corrigendum)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/correction-corrigendum" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/correction-corrigendum",
  "name": "Correction (corrigendum)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/correction-corrigendum",
  "description": "A formal post-publication notice that amends an error in a published article without invalidating its overall conclusions. A correction is appropriate when the error is bounded and the central findings remain reliable; a retraction is appropriate when the conclusions are unreliable.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-integrity#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/correction-corrigendum",
  "sameAs": [
    "corrigendum",
    "erratum",
    "correction notice"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:52",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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