The journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking is retracting a paper about Facebook.
“Bridging the Gap on Facebook: Assessing Intergroup Contact and Its Effects for Intergroup Relations,” is by Sandy Schumann of the Free University of Brussels. The notice says only:
This article has been officially retracted from the Journal.
We asked journal editor Brenda K. Wiederhold for more information about the retraction, and she responded:
The Schumann paper, Bridging the Gap on Facebook, was originally published in our August 2012 issue, volume 15, number 8.
After publication, Dr. Schumann requested that additional changes be made to the article. After a thorough investigation, it was determined that the changes that were requested would substantially alter the submitted and published paper which had been put through rigorous peer-review and was accepted in that form.
The authors were invited to resubmit a new version of the article to go through the peer-review process, which they have accepted, and the new manuscript is undergoing peer review. The new submission is not guaranteed publication.
CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking Journal is dedicated to the highest ethical standards of scientific publishing and does not tolerate any improprieties.
A journal with both “psychology” and “social” in the title… I wouldn’t be surprised if those journals basically put a ban on corrections and make retraction and resubmission the norm. For the next few years, at least.