Springer Names Three Kinds of Notice and Does Not Say on Its Own Page Which One Fits Your Case

This brief exists because the natural next question — which of the three notices applies to my situation? — is not answered on the page that announces the three notices.

What the page does say. Springer issues one of three notice types “dependent on the situation”: an Erratum, an Expression of Concern, or a Retraction Notice. Each one is “linked to the original article”, and all three are issued “in accordance with the COPE Retraction Guidelines”.

What it does not say, read in full. No criteria distinguishing an Erratum from a Retraction Notice. No description of who makes the decision — an editor, an ethics committee, Springer Nature staff. No process steps and no timeline. The page instead points to two further resources: Springer’s own “Publishing Ethics for journals” page, and COPE’s Retraction Guidelines directly — which is where the actual decision criteria live.

This is not a criticism of Springer Nature’s underlying practice, which is explicitly tied to a well-established external standard (COPE). It is a note about where the information an author needs actually sits: not on the page most likely to be found first.

Pointing to COPE rather than restating its guidelines is a defensible design choice: COPE’s own guidance is updated periodically (see our companion note on COPE’s revised retraction guidance), and a publisher that paraphrased it on a separate support page would risk the paraphrase drifting out of date with the source it claims to follow.

The cost of that choice falls on the author trying to work out, quickly, what is about to happen to their paper. A support article titled “corrections and retractions policy” is exactly where someone in that position would look first, and finding three names with no criteria is a worse experience than either stating the criteria or not raising the question at all.

Naming this gap plainly, rather than filling it with COPE’s guidance presented as though it were Springer Nature’s own words, is the honest way to handle a source that is thinner than the question deserves.

How it reaches a specific journal. This is a general Springer support article rather than a journal-level editorial policy; a Nature-branded or BMC title may publish its own, more detailed corrections-and-retractions page, which is worth checking directly rather than relying on this general one alone.

Where a specific journal’s own page does state clearer criteria, that page governs for your submission; this brief is sourced to the general support article because that is what an author searching “Springer retraction policy” is most likely to find first.