Data Errors – What we correct and how to report errors

PEP-Web reflects the journal’s published content.  However, data errors and omissions can happen in the conversion process.

1. Editorial Errors
   1. PEP-Web is a historical archive that reflects the journals published content.  To preserve the original, we don’t make any editorial changes.
2. Errors in Conversion for PEP-Web
   1. Individual Typos
      1. We do our best to fix errors reported that occur within “key” parts of the data, like titles and author names, and typos in key conceptual names in papers.   If you see a typo in one of these areas, please report it.
      2. Unfortunately,  for simple typos in the general text, the data entry has a low but known error rate that for economy, we have to accept and cannot afford to fix (minor typos in the text).
   2. Systemic Errors – System Global or Article Global Character Errors
      1. We do our best to quickly fix systemic errors when reported–systemic errors are errors that occur “globally” in a paper, series of papers, or the entire database.  For example, in a series of papers due to typography, an l could be mistaken for an i, and that may result in many words like “seif” instead of “self”.  Please be sure and report any systemic errors
   3. Missing Data
      1. Incomplete articles or pages or other portions of articles that are missing can happen when we have incomplete originals.  Please report these.
   4. Link Errors
      1. Links are based on the information provided in the references–and a software algorithm that tries to match references to a PEP article when the information in the reference is incomplete or inaccurate.   Errors here are inevitable, based on the imperfect information provided in the reference, and the partial matching algorithm.  You can report them and we will use that to improve the algorithm, though it’s not possible to fix all the links.
   5. Formatting Errors
      1. Note that while we maintain page breaks, formatting is standardized to PEP’s own style sheet, and may not match the journal.  This is not an error and while we will consider these reports and suggestions, they are not likely to be addressed.
3. Author naming inconsistencies
   1. We don’t change the author area of articles to make author names more consistent than they were in the printed publications (e.g., sometimes author names are published in different ways, with or without middle initials). Thus, author’s names can only be updated if what is presented on PEP-Web differs from the actual publication. In this case, please report it as a data error.
   2. As of September 2021, PEP-Web no longer has an Author Index. However, when you type in a name using the new search features, the system has been engineered to be able to pick up all ways of presenting it.
   3. Note, since author’s names are as published, it’s possible that when searching for an author’s name where two authors have the same exact name, it will produce a set representing the union of those articles.
4. Reporting Errors
   1. What to include in a report
      1. The complete URL where you’ve spotted the error
      2. The type of error (systemic, missing data, link error)
      3. The text of the error (so we can search the page for it) or an example of it if it occurs multiple times.
      4. Show the corrected text, or describe the correction if it’s in more than one location
      5. Contact information if we have questions about your report
   2. Where to report errors
      1. To submit corrections use the PEP-Web built-in “Report a Data Error” function built into PEP-Web. Please report only one error per form submission.
      2. For an entire journal just added to PEP-Web, we can arrange a custom form of reporting suited to bulk error reporting, when it seems practical and more efficient.