Requesting Corrections

How to submit corrections to the Anthology


November 11, 2021

Types of corrections

The staff of the ACL Anthology can process requests for many types of corrections. We generally distinguish five types, loosely following the ACM Publications Policy:

Please take note of the following points regarding revisions and retractions.

Correcting Metadata

A request to change paper metadata (that does not require any PDF changes) can be submitted in several ways.

The Anthology team will attend to the correction as we find time. Metadata changes are generally accepted if they are consistent with the PDF, which we take as authoritative. However, please see the note below about author changes.

Revisions and errata

For requests to change paper content (either a revision or an erratum), again, please file a Github issue. Please note the following:

For revisions, the brief summary should allow readers to find the changed parts, but need not be too detailed. Here are some good examples:

Following these instructions will help us to process corrections more quickly. We will do our best to process revisions or errata within four weeks, but make no guarantees as to the processing time. Submissions not meeting these standards will be rejected, potentially without notice.

A revision that changes the author list needs permission (see below).

Retractions

To initiate a retraction, please communicate directly with the Anthology director. Retractions often involve the organizing editors or chairs of the respective journal or conference.

Retractions result in the following changes in the Anthology:

Removal

Removals are rare events that are undertaken only in the most serious of situations, such as plagiarism or fraud. A paper can be removed at the request of the scientific organization with jurisdiction over the paper. For most papers within the Anthology, this is the ACL, but any organization with publications in the Anthology (e.g., AMTA, LREC) can also request the removal of a paper. The Anthology staff does not adjudicate removal decisions.

A removal will result in the following changes to the Anthology:

Note on changes to author metadata

The Anthology generally accepts corrections to the author metadata that bring it into line with the PDF, which we treat as authoritative. Example corrections include name spellings and details (such as initialization or the inclusion of a middle name), changes to author ordering, and even the addition of authors mistakenly left out of the metadata. Because it is beyond our ability to keep track of the many differing policies governing conferences and journals whose proceedings we host, it is therefore up to those groups to ensure that PDF authorship is correct when proceedings are delivered to the Anthology for ingestion.

We reserve the right to seek permission or corroboration from the associated conference or workshop program chairs in unusual situations, such as removing or adding an author to a PDF revision. In such cases, we will ask authors to arrange for this permission to be conveyed to us, either via email or on a Github issue.