Protocols and Restrictions for Post-Acceptance Corrections, Erratum, and Article Retractions

12-06-2026

Announcement Date: 12 June 2026
Effective Date: 15 June 2026

To maintain the highest standards of scientific integrity and transparency in biomedical publishing, the Editorial Board of the Siriraj Medical Journal (SMJ) has updated its policy regarding post-acceptance and post-publication changes.

I. The Principle of Permanence of the Scholarly Record

Once a manuscript has been formally accepted by SMJ, the original publication will not be altered, removed, or replaced. The published article remains a permanent, unalterable component of the scientific literature. Any approved technical or editorial modifications will be issued exclusively via a distinct, permanently linked erratum or correction notice.

The authors should take responsibility for careful proofreading and approval of their final manuscript. Once the galley proof of the manuscript and the graphical abstract have been approved, they will not be altered by the publisher upon publication.

II. Eligibility and Chronological Windows for Requests

Authors may formally submit requests for corrections or errata only after a manuscript has been formally accepted for publication. This protocol applies uniformly whether the manuscript is awaiting volume/issue assignment or has already been allocated to a specific issue.

Authors maintain the absolute right to declare data discrepancies or voluntarily withdraw their submission at any chronological point prior to the formal issuance of the acceptance decision.

III. Categorization of Post-Acceptance Amendments

In alignment with established indexing standards, SMJ strictly categorizes amendments into two distinct classes based on their impact on the academic validity of the work:

  • Erratum

An erratum is reserved for significant modifications addressing errors that tend to affect the interpretation of the original article or edit content that substantially changes the original discussion and conclusion.

Due to the material impact on the scientific narrative, erratum requests must be re-peer reviewed by the original reviewers assigned to the manuscript.

  • Correction

A correction is restricted to minor clerical or typographical modifications that do not affect the scientific interpretation of the work. This category is confined to editing misspellings or typographical errors (typo errors) within names, surnames, captions, figures, tables, or page numbers.

Standard correction protocols do not allow requests to change, add, or change the order of the list of authors.

In the case of registration and approval dates of a research protocol or institutional review board (IRB), authors requesting a rectification of these dates must submit the original, official certificate issued by the ethics committee or registry. The amendment will not be processed without verifiable institutional documentation. If a requested date correction reveals that biological samples or human data were collected prior to obtaining official ethical approval, the amendment will be denied. The article will proceed directly to a formal retraction only.

IV. Ethical Breaches and Mandatory Retraction Protocols

SMJ will not under any circumstances issue an erratum or a correction if the underlying error stems from a violation of research or publication ethics. In any instance where an article is verified to have breached these ethical boundaries, the journal shall proceed immediately with a formal retraction only.

A formal retraction protocol will be initiated for any article that demonstrates:

  • Violations of human research ethics or publication ethics
  • Plagiarism
  • Falsification
  • Fabrication
  • Duplications or Salami Publications (redundant publications or the fractional slicing of a single dataset across multiple papers).
  • Violations of grants or funding contracts.
  • Hallucinative references
  • Any other serious misconduct or ethical breaches as defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

V. Formal Submission Procedure

Authors seeking an amendment must submit a comprehensive, signed petition to the SMJ Editorial Office via postal mail or email. The petition must explicitly state the precise nature of the error, provide the exact location within the text, and provide a clear justification and evidence to categorize the request under Section III of this policy.

The Editorial Board and the Editor-in-Chief reserve exclusive, non-negotiable authority regarding the approval of amendments and the enforcement of retraction protocols.

 

Highest regards,

The Editorial Board
Siriraj Medical Journal (SMJ)