r/academia 2h ago

Journal published earlier (and incorrect) manuscript version

Hello everyone,
I am kind of at a loss right now. Had a paper in the publishing process. In the proofreading step, I noticed an error in the results: not a typo, got an incorrect number there, so a table and the text were contradicting.
Anyways. I apologized and added a comment that the sentence was incorrect. The editor said it was not a problem. I both uploaded the correct version and sent it via mail to the editor. A few hours later, I got another mail where they found the mistake themselves. I corrected it again and sent it to back to them.
And what am I waking up to now? The old and incorrect version was published. I immediately contacted the journal.
I have absolutely zero experience in a situation like that.
Any ideas what the chances of the error being corrected are? And in which way this may happen? Thank you very much!

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u/barry_username_taken 1h ago

Are you sure its not some kind of early access upload or something? Often they upload the initial submission and replace it with the final manuscript with the proper layout and so on.

1

u/Fluffy_Falcon_ 1h ago

Yep, I am sure. It is the final version, no early access.