A corrigendum corrects an error the authors introduced before publication — flawed data, a wrong affiliation, a miscalculation — while an erratum corrects an error the publisher introduced during production, such as a typesetting mistake or a misplaced figure. A retraction withdraws the paper entirely because its findings can no longer be trusted. Which notice an editor issues depends on who caused the error and whether it invalidates the paper’s conclusions.
A corrigendum vs erratum decision is one of the most common — and most frequently mishandled — calls a journal editor or research integrity office makes. Get it wrong and a paper that needed only a correction ends up stigmatised as retracted, or worse, a paper with compromised findings survives under a cosmetic “correction” label. This explainer sets out a COPE-aligned decision framework for distinguishing corrigenda, errata, and retractions, and for knowing when an interim Expression of Concern is the right holding step.
Definition: a corrigendum is a post-publication notice correcting an error the authors introduced into an already-published article, distinct from an erratum, which corrects an error the journal or publisher introduced during production.
Contents
- What is the difference between a corrigendum and an erratum?
- When does an error require a retraction instead of a correction?
- A step-by-step decision framework for editors
- Expressions of Concern, partial retractions, and addenda
- Redaction vs retraction: why the terms get confused
- Common questions about corrections and retractions
- Implications for research offices
- The bottom line
What Is the Difference Between a Corrigendum and an Erratum?
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) states the working distinction plainly: “the term erratum usually refers to a production error, caused by the journal,” while “the term corrigendum (or correction) usually refers to an author error.” An erratum fixes something the journal’s own production process broke — a dropped decimal point during typesetting, a caption swapped between two figures, an author’s name misspelled by a copyeditor. A corrigendum fixes something wrong in the manuscript the authors submitted — an incorrect data table, a miscalculated statistic, an omitted funding disclosure, a wrong affiliation.
Both notices share one condition: the underlying conclusions of the paper must remain valid. Neither is a vehicle for revising results, adding new data, or reversing a finding — that requires a different mechanism entirely.
Not every publisher enforces this line consistently. COPE itself notes that “many journals do not distinguish between corrigendum or erratum but the note can explain if it is the publisher’s or authors’ error,” and some use “correction” as a catch-all. The US National Library of Medicine, which indexes PubMed, goes further still: it classifies both corrigenda and errata under a single “Published Erratum” tag for cataloguing purposes, regardless of who caused the error. Editors should not assume a downstream index preserves the author/publisher distinction they carefully applied upstream.
| Notice type | Who caused the error | Typical trigger | Effect on the record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Erratum | Publisher/production | Typesetting, misplaced figure, production-introduced typo | Article stands; notice linked bidirectionally |
| Corrigendum | Author(s) | Data entry error, wrong affiliation, miscalculation | Article stands; notice linked bidirectionally |
| Addendum | Author(s) | New, non-conflicting supplementary information | Article stands; addendum appended |
| Expression of Concern | Unresolved | Serious concern raised, investigation incomplete | Article flagged pending outcome |
| Retraction | Author(s), publisher, or both | Unreliable findings, misconduct, plagiarism, duplicate publication | Article formally withdrawn; original remains visible with notice |
When Does an Error Require a Retraction Instead of a Correction?
A retraction is warranted the moment an error stops being cosmetic and starts undermining the paper’s conclusions. COPE’s retraction guidance and the ICMJE Recommendations converge on the same threshold: if the reported findings can no longer be relied upon — whether from honest experimental error, data fabrication, image manipulation, or a flawed method that invalidates the results — a correction notice is insufficient and the paper must be retracted.
COPE’s published criteria for retraction include clear evidence of unreliable findings, whether from major error or research misconduct; plagiarism or duplicate/redundant publication without proper attribution; and research that failed to meet ethical requirements for human or animal subjects. A single miscoded statistical test that changes a paper’s headline conclusion crosses this line; a mislabelled axis on a supplementary figure does not.
This is a binary test editors should apply explicitly rather than by instinct: does the error change what a reader would conclude from the paper? If yes, retraction (or, where only part of the paper is compromised, a carefully scoped partial retraction) is the correct instrument — not a corrigendum dressed up to avoid reputational fallout.
A Step-by-Step Decision Framework for Editors
Use this sequence to route an identified error to the correct notice type:
- Does the error affect the validity, reliability, or interpretation of the results? If no, proceed to step 2. If yes, skip to step 4.
- Who introduced the error — the authors before submission, or the publisher during production? Author-origin errors that don’t affect conclusions become a corrigendum; publisher-origin errors become an erratum.
- Is the correction additive rather than corrective — new information that doesn’t conflict with the published record? Route to an addendum instead.
- Is there evidence of misconduct, fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or duplicate publication, or does the error invalidate the paper’s central conclusions? If yes, this is retraction territory.
- Is an investigation still open but the concern serious enough that readers need an immediate warning? Issue an Expression of Concern as an interim notice while the inquiry proceeds.
- Publish the notice with bidirectional linking to the original article’s DOI, so indexers, Crossref, and reference managers can propagate the correction status automatically.
Every step should be documented in the journal’s editorial record even when the final notice seems self-evident — COPE explicitly cautions that authors must be informed before any correction or retraction notice is published, and that agreement on wording, while ideal, “is not a requirement.”
Expressions of Concern, Partial Retractions, and Addenda
Three intermediate instruments sit between “leave it alone” and “retract in full,” and editors under-use all three.
- Expression of Concern: issued when an investigation into a paper’s integrity is under way but unresolved, and the concern is serious enough that readers need warning before the inquiry concludes. It is explicitly a holding notice, not a verdict.
- Partial retraction: withdraws only the compromised portion of a paper — a single figure, dataset, or claim — while leaving the remainder of the record intact. COPE guidance treats this instrument cautiously, since a partially retracted paper can be difficult for readers to interpret correctly; it should be reserved for cases where the surviving content is genuinely independent of the flawed portion.
- Addendum: adds new, non-conflicting information to a published paper — for example, a dataset the authors did not originally deposit. It corrects nothing; it supplements.
Since 2023, Crossref has stewarded the Retraction Watch Database and integrated its records into Crossref metadata, making retraction status machine-discoverable directly from an article’s DOI rather than requiring a manual search. This matters operationally: a research office checking whether a cited paper has been retracted, corrected, or flagged with an Expression of Concern can now query that status programmatically instead of relying on the journal’s own website staying current.
Redaction vs Retraction: Why the Terms Get Confused
“Redaction” and “retraction” are frequently conflated in search queries and in casual use, but they describe unrelated actions. Redaction means removing or obscuring specific sensitive content from a document — a patient identifier, classified information, a legally privileged passage — while leaving the rest of the document intact and published. Retraction means formally withdrawing an entire scholarly article from the reliable literature because its findings can no longer be trusted.
A research office redacts personal data from a dataset before deposit; it does not redact a published paper. If the concern is that a paper’s findings are unreliable, the applicable mechanism is a correction (corrigendum/erratum) or a retraction — never a “redaction” of the article itself. Editors and compliance staff should treat any external query using “redact” in connection with a published paper as a signal to clarify which of the five instruments above the requester actually means.
Common Questions About Corrections and Retractions
What Is the Difference Between Addendum and Corrigendum?
An addendum adds new, non-conflicting information to a published paper, such as a supplementary dataset the authors omitted at submission. A corrigendum corrects an existing error the authors introduced — incorrect data, a wrong affiliation, a miscalculation. Addenda supplement the record; corrigenda fix it.
What Is the Purpose of a Corrigendum?
A corrigendum exists to correct an author-introduced error that appears in the body of a published article — flawed data, a misreported figure, or an incorrect reference — without withdrawing the paper. It preserves the article’s validity while making the published record accurate and permanently linked to the original.
What Is the Difference Between Errata and Correction?
“Correction” is the umbrella term covering any post-publication fix that doesn’t invalidate a paper’s conclusions. “Errata” traditionally denotes production-side corrections specifically, but the US National Library of Medicine indexes all such fixes — author or publisher caused — under a single “Published Erratum” category, regardless of origin.
What Does an Erratum Mean?
An erratum is a formal notice correcting an error the publisher or journal introduced during production — typesetting, a misplaced figure, a formatting mistake — rather than an error present in the authors’ original submission. It confirms the underlying research and conclusions remain valid.
Implications for Research Offices
For institutional research offices and research integrity staff, the practical stakes of this distinction are higher than the terminology suggests. Grant reporting, tenure and promotion dossiers, and REF/assessment-exercise submissions all treat “retracted” very differently from “corrected” — a retraction can trigger funder inquiries and institutional misconduct review, while a corrigendum typically does not. Misclassifying a serious, conclusion-altering error as a corrigendum to avoid that scrutiny is itself a publication-ethics failure, not a shortcut.
Research administrators should build a standing check into any publication-tracking workflow: query DOIs against Crossref’s retraction metadata at the point of citation-count reporting or dossier compilation, not only at initial publication, since correction and retraction notices can post months or years after the original article.
The Bottom Line
The corrigendum/erratum boundary is a question of who caused the error; the correction/retraction boundary is a question of whether the paper’s conclusions still hold. Editors who apply both tests explicitly — and who reach for an Expression of Concern when an investigation is still open — protect the scholarly record more effectively than those who default to whichever notice feels least reputationally costly. As Crossref’s retraction metadata becomes a standard citation-checking layer, the cost of misclassification is no longer just reputational; it is now machine-visible across the scholarly infrastructure that research offices, funders, and publishers all query.
For related terminology, consult the CASRAI Dictionary of research-administration terms, and see how correction and retraction tracking fits into wider institutional workflows on the research administration hub.
