July 27, 2022 | Simone Ragavooloo
Removing offensive content seems an attractive way of righting wrongs and preventing harm. However, for a journal this is not as simple as it first appears. Scientific publishers have a responsibility to preserve the scientific record. Best practice in scholarly publishing is that even retracted content remains retrievable. Even when publications decide to correct or remove content, the original version will remain in print editions and in other locations online through third parties such as indexers and libraries.