The authors of a paper that examined the best way to inspire creativity in the workplace have issued an erratum after they “failed to cite some very relevant recent papers in experimental economics.”
The paper, “Incentives for creativity,” was published by Experimental Economics only a few months ago — in May — by two researchers from the University of California San Diego and the University of Amsterdam. Sanjiv Erat and Uri Gneezy found that incentives don’t actually improve creativity, and competitive incentives can actually reduce creativity.
The notice updates the paper with references to four studies published between 2012 and 2015 …
Journal editor David Cooper, a professor at Florida State University, said that the authors contacted him about making the changes:
I was contacted by the authors of the paper after it had been put online. They let me know that they had failed to cite some relevant papers and asked if they could modify the text. After checking with our production staff, I let them know that the existing article could not be modified but we could publish an erratum. This led to the published erratum.
Second author Gneezy didn’t respond to questions about the last paragraph of the notice, and said they simply forgot to include the references:
Sometimes things are just as simple as they seem. We forgot to include the relevant recent literature in experimental economics, so we fixed it. No one complained.
Oliver Kirchkamp, second author on the paper referenced in the notice’s last paragraph, said that Erat and Gneezy cited them without prompting:
We are, of course, glad to see that Erat and Gneezy cite our paper. As far as we understand they do this on their own accord. We never contacted them in this matter.
I know a large number of authors who have to cite some relevant papers (ahem), this is a nice model of behavior for those forgetful authors!
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