OSA's Policy for Corrections and Retractions

[Version 12 May 2017]

The Optical Society (OSA) recognizes its responsibility as a publisher to preserve the integrity and completeness of the scholarly record. Changes to articles after they have been published online may only be made under the circumstances outlined below. OSA's policy is based on best practice in the academic publishing community.

An Erratum is a statement by the authors of the original paper, published in the same journal, which briefly describes any correction(s) resulting from errors or omissions, noting any effects on the conclusions of the paper.

• The original paper is neither corrected nor removed from the online journal, but an erratum notice is given on the abstract page.
• The Erratum is made freely available to all readers and is linked to the original article.
• Errata are submitted to the journal through the Prism article tracking system.

A Publisher's Note informs readers that an article has been corrected subsequent to publication. It is issued by the Publisher and is used in cases where typographical or production errors (which are the fault of the Publisher) affect the integrity of the article metadata (such as title, author list or byline) or will significantly impact the readers' ability to comprehend the article.

• The original article is replaced with a corrected version where possible and a separate Publisher's Note describing the correction is linked to it. The date that the correction is made is noted on the corrected article.
• Publisher's Notes are freely available to all readers.

Errors or omissions by the authors that affect the integrity of article metadata (such as author list, byline, or funding) are considered at the discretion of the Editors and Publisher.

• If approved, the original article is replaced with a corrected version where possible and a separate Publisher's Note describing the correction is linked to it.
• The date the correction is made is noted on the corrected article.

A Retraction is a notice that the paper should not be regarded as part of the scientific literature. Retractions can be initiated by the authors when they have discovered substantial scientific errors, and may also be issued if the OSA Editorial Ethics Review Panel has determined that misconduct has occurred, such as plagiarism, fraudulent use of data, duplicate submission, bogus authorship, etc.

• The Retraction is made freely available to all readers and is linked to the original article.
• A notice of retraction is appended to the original .pdf article and also displayed on the abstract page.
• The retraction indicates the reason for the action and who is responsible for the decision. If a retraction is made without the unanimous agreement of the authors, that is also noted.

OSA Publishing does not permit publication of Addenda.

OSA's General Editorial Policies and Ethical Guidelines

• General editorial policies and procedures for OSA Journals can be found here.
• Guidelines of the Optical Society of America Concerning Ethical Practices in the Publication of Research (PDF)

OSA Publishing's Crossmark Policy

Crossmark is a multi-publisher initiative to provide a standard way for readers to locate the current version of a piece of content. By applying the Crossmark logo OSA Publishing is committing to maintaining the content it publishes and to alerting readers to changes if and when they occur.

Clicking on the Crossmark logo will tell you the current status of a document and may also give you additional publication record information about the document.