NASEM Holds Meeting on Corrections and Retractions Guidelines

Last month, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) held a meeting of the study committee on guidelines for corrections and retractions in published scientific papers. The study committee heard presentations from Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, Caitlin Bakker, chair of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Working Group on Communications of Retractions, and Ivan Oransky, director of Retraction Watch. During the meeting, committee members debated how to balance the interests and responsibilities of competing stakeholders, such as universities, funders, and journal editors and publishers, and how to incentivize retraction investigations and publications. Presenters and committee members repeatedly emphasized the need for transparency throughout the retractions process, though they disagreed on the best format for doing so; the need to break the stigma around journal retractions was also raised. Future meetings will likely continue to discuss how to best balance achieving the practical aims of retractions with considerations of the role retractions play in public trust in science.  

As of right now, future meetings have not been scheduled. A recording of the meeting can be found here.

This article was contributed by COSSA Intern Eva Lettiere.