Open access repositories are integral to open research practices and the democratisation of knowledge. A google scholar search will often link those without access to published versions to a version made available by a repository. However, as Frédérique Bordignon shows, they have a critical blind spot: their frequent failure to effectively show corrections and retractions issued by journals.

Open repositories were designed to enhance access to and visibility of academic outputs, offering a vital alternative to paywalled journals. Yet, their primary focus has remained on dissemination, with little attention paid to maintaining the accuracy and reliability of the scholarly record when errors or misconduct are discovered in published research.

In those (rare) cases, journals issue editorial notices like expressions of concern, corrections, additions, errata, corrigenda, withdrawals, and retractions (considered as the most severe measure). Those editorial notices warn readers of issues with prior findings and also promote transparency around corrections to uphold the integrity and reliability of the scholarly record.

My research sheds light on this significant issue: most repositories fail to update the status of publications that have been corrected or retracted after being deposited. A manually verified analysis of HAL, one of the world’s largest institutional repositories, revealed that 91% of retracted or corrected publications lacked any indication of their updated status. This glaring oversight leaves researchers and the public vulnerable to citing or relying on invalidated studies.

A manually verified analysis of HAL, one of the world’s largest institutional repositories, revealed that 91% of retracted or corrected publications lacked any indication of their updated status.

Obviously, this issue is not unique to HAL. It reflects systemic shortcomings across repositories worldwide. While the open-access movement has been transformative in facilitating the forward momentum of knowledge dissemination, it has largely neglected the need for a “reverse gear” to signal corrections and ensure that the scholarly record remains both accessible and reliable over time. The work of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories is very revealing in this regard: their technical recommendations for “next generation repositories” provide nothing specific for addressing corrections and retractions.

A potential solution?

Determining the role open repositories can play in ensuring the reliability of the scholarly record is not straightforward. A key question is whether corrections should necessarily and systematically be reported in these repositories. This issue arises because open repositories do not always perfectly mirror officially published content. They can archive various versions of a work, including the published version of record, preprints (shared before journal acceptance), and postprints (author’s accepted manuscript, after peer review and revisions). The version deposited in an open archive may not even contain the error or issue that prompted a correction or retraction. For instance, an error might have been introduced in a later version, whereas an earlier preprint shared in the repository remains unaffected.

While preprints and published versions often differ only slightly, it is unreasonable to expect repository managers, academic librarians, or metadata curators to compare documents and decide on whether corrections should be mentioned. The main aim is to improve the way in which the status of each archived version is indicated. Readers should know immediately if they are consulting content that is identical to the published (and possibly retracted) version. This is particularly crucial because, for one deposit in a repository, the same core metadata is often associated with all versions (preprint, postprint, publisher version) and conveyed by the digital object identifier (DOI).

Readers should know immediately if they are consulting content that is identical to the published (and possibly retracted) version.

On another note, since publishers do not always report corrections effectively, open repositories could fill this gap and archive editorial notices, and establish clear, bidirectional technical links between corrections and publications, as recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics and the National Information Standards Organization.

For publications with DOIs, updating processes could be automated and streamlined by leveraging partnerships like the Crossref x Retraction Watch collaboration. This approach could also incorporate information from platforms such as PubMed, PubPeer, and Scite, which use diverse methods to detect and report retractions.

Why it matters

The number of open repositories continues to grow, yet there are no systematic plans to include visible warnings to alert readers when accessing a retracted or corrected publication.

Experts in research integrity and advocates for reforming research practices have long called for greater quality control of scientific literature during its production and better reporting of anomalies identified post-publication. They emphasise the importance of “cleaning up” or “decontaminating” the scholarly record, stressing the need for reliable metadata and thorough reporting of corrections. While publishers are urged to promptly correct or retract problematic publications, these efforts rarely extend to involving open repositories in the broader correction process.

Misleading or invalid research can propagate errors in subsequent studies, shape flawed policies and erode public trust in science.

The consequences of uncorrected repositories extend beyond academic circles. Misleading or invalid research can propagate errors in subsequent studies, shape flawed policies and erode public trust in science. By integrating correction mechanisms, repositories can strengthen their role as stewards of reliable knowledge, and will remain in line with their long-standing fight against the supremacy of publishers, who are not always very clear about reporting corrections, especially when these are the result of breaches of integrity.

This post draws on the author’s article, Moving Open Repositories Out of the Blind Spot of Initiatives to Correct the Scholarly Record, published in Learned Publishing.

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