Can I get a refund if I bought an article that contains a major flaw?

Question

Is it possible to get a refund from a publisher if I bought an article that contains a major flaw (i.e.,one that invalidates the main results or the main conclusions)? Assume the article was bought through one of the main academic publication's paywall.

Wouldn't that refund hinge upon whether you can still use the article? If you found a flaw, as you describe, you might end up publishing a paper superseding the results from the flawed article, at which point the publisher might see no reason to refund anything. — O. R. Mapper, Nov 10 '15 at 16:33
The analogous question at Movies.SE would of course be: can I get a refund on my movie tickets if I didn't like the film? — Stephan Kolassa, Nov 10 '15 at 16:36
@StephanKolassa Yes for movies, some theaters have a policy to refund the customer if he leaves within X minutes after the movie starts. — Franck Dernoncourt, Nov 10 '15 at 16:39
@FranckDernoncourt: if you write to the publisher as @EnergyNumbers suggests, you could include on which page you stopped reading. I'm afraid it won't help you much, though. — Stephan Kolassa, Nov 10 '15 at 16:44
@FranckDernoncourt If journals refunded fees if people didn't finish a paper, they would immediately go out of business. — Ellen Spertus, Nov 10 '15 at 17:43
EU Consumer Rights Directive gives a 14-day time period to ask for refund for digital goods (including ebooks) unless the seller explicitly tells you that you will begin downloading it and lose your right to refund. — Hassassin, Nov 10 '15 at 20:02
@Hassassin, it might however be that consumer rights might not apply to commercial customers (aka non-customers) which one might be when accessing said paper at the workplace. (Not sure, need to check.) — Ghanima, Nov 10 '15 at 20:45
You cannot get a refund, but you can get the privilege to work for free for the publisher and make them make more money out of your work, by submitting a paper to refute the wrong one. This is what paywalled journals' publishers do! — Nemo, Nov 10 '15 at 20:59
How did you buy? If a credit card, why not file a claim with the CC company? — Superbest, Nov 10 '15 at 21:20
@Superbest I don't think it's appropriate to suggest trying not to pay for something that one bought. — Cape Code, Nov 11 '15 at 06:41
@CapeCode If I buy a chair online and it turns out to miss a leg, I'm sure as hell going to want a refund. If I buy an article from a publisher that certifies its correctness (that's pretty much the only real service they provide) and it turns out to be false (read: useless, arguably) then the same rules apply. Not only should I get a refund but every other prior buyer of this should get a note and a refund. (Once the mistake is established beyond doubt.) — Raphael, Nov 11 '15 at 08:53
@Raphael publishers never grantee correctness of the content. That would be economic suicide since the majority of scientific articles are wrong in a way or another. The publisher only provides access, if you're unhappy about the content it's the authors you should ask for a refund. — Cape Code, Nov 11 '15 at 09:15
@CapeCode If there is no such guarantee by which we can hold the relevant parties accountable, not even for major flaws, then publishers and peer review are useless. — Raphael, Nov 11 '15 at 09:23
@Raphael a telephone provider does not grantee that the conversation you will have on the phone will be enjoyable. You can shoot the messenger if you want. The issue remains that the perpetrator of the bad science are the authors and the people who didn't see it during peer review are academics, not the publisher's employees. — Cape Code, Nov 11 '15 at 09:40
If I publish a paper and I retract it because it contains an error, do I get the fee I paid for publishing it back? — gerrit, Nov 11 '15 at 11:41
@CapeCode The analogy doesn't work. It's more like, I ask the phone company to connect me to my good friend John Doe, which is a service they (claim to) provide. I then get connected to a commercial line somewhere in south-east Asia where they try to sell me magic stones. Oh yes will I demand a refund for the outrageous sum that call cost! (The idea that outsourcing of the actual work to people paid by tax payers gives publishers a comfortable blanket of plausible deniability in cases of quality issues sickens me even more than the original topic.) — Raphael, Nov 11 '15 at 12:17
@Raphael publishers provide a service, the content (that can be disappointing) is, like you said, paid largely by the taxpayer. Yet you choose to be angry at publishers instead of asking to sack the people who use deception to advance their career, or are just too sloppy to deserve their position. It's a political opinion to which you are entitled of course. — Cape Code, Nov 11 '15 at 12:23
@CapeCode What makes you think I exclude these people (authors and reviewers) from the responsibility? I most certainly do not. However, this question is about getting a refund, so we are talking about publishers only, as we pay these (ironically). And yes, I am of the firm opinion that they do hold some responsibility -- if not for the quality itself then for how they act when quality issues are made apparent. Withdrawal of wrongful papers, a public note so that people who missed the problem can learn of it (snowball!), and refunding (individual buyers) are the bare minimum, I think. — Raphael, Nov 11 '15 at 12:46
@CapeCode If they can not or refuse to provide this part of their service, then they are not fit to be (part of) the foundation upon which science rests. (Feel free to call this a political opinion; if that label is what it takes to make the statement, fine.) — Raphael, Nov 11 '15 at 12:47
As much as I really wish this were the case, no, you generally can't get a refund. — reirab, Nov 11 '15 at 19:02
This is different from not liking a book or a movie: one of the things you pay for (supposedly) is a proper peer-review process. If there is a glaring error that should have been caught by any reasonable referee, and the paper is useless as a result, you have, at least in principle, bought a faulty product. The claims in the abstract were used to advertise that product, and those claims were demonstrably false. — Peter Bloem, Nov 12 '15 at 11:26
@Peter you are not paying for peer review. Reviewers are chosen by the editorial board (i.e. not the publisher) and do not work for the publisher. — Cape Code, Nov 12 '15 at 13:11
@CapeCode You are not paying for the reviewer's time (in most cases), but you are paying for the review process. You are paying for the editor's time in finding reviewers, and badgering them. I mean, I don't personally think the publishers actually add any value, but they themselves certainly seem to think they're adding upwards of 1000$ of value per paper. — Peter Bloem, Nov 12 '15 at 14:08
@CapeCode: I would compare the situation to softwares with an error that makes it useless rather than not enjoying a movie/book. The producer/distributor of a movie cannot guarantee for sure that you will enjoy it. On the other hand, the review process is similar to the quality control or test phase of a software development. If the software is buggy because they missed an important error, then I am entitled to a refund (or a free correction if possible). The fact that the reviewers are not paid is their problem, not mine. — Taladris, Nov 13 '15 at 06:53
@Taladris without going into the details of why commercial software development and research are two very different things, the content of an academic paper is not a product. At least it's not the "product" you are buying when you pay to download a paper. — Cape Code, Nov 13 '15 at 15:19
@CapeCode: Therefore, what am I buying? The content of an academic paper seems to fit with definitions $1$ and $3$ of product in Wiktionary. — Taladris, Nov 14 '15 at 00:46
I wonder if there would be some leeway in thinking about this in the way, that the article's abstract and contents don't match. As the abstract is not delivered because of the flaw, they might be blamed of false advertising? — puslet88, Jan 26 '16 at 08:46

score 127 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 10 '15 at 16:33

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Of course you can request one - just send an email. You'll brighten up the publisher's office for the afternoon, and they'll be chuckling all the way home.

So just as long as you don't seriously expect to get your money back, you'll be fine. When you paid your fee, you were paying for access to read the paper. As long as that access was provided, then the publisher has met their side of the bargain. Peer review is not a guarantee of correctness. It's a first-level junk filter, nothing more.

And on top of you getting what you've paid for, you've got the additional bonus that you've now got a new paper that you can write, that's practically already written itself; the paper where you take apart your bought paper's argument. Magnanimously, the publisher won't require you to pay extra for this bonus - you got it thrown in for free.

answered Nov 10 '15 at 16:33

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I'm not sure what you are saying is legitimate, either morally or legally. If the publishing company knows the paper is bogus, either through their own review or from having been informed by previous buyers' complaints, they are committing fraud if they keep selling access to it. – Kurt Tappe Nov 10 '15 at 20:38
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Magnanimously, the publisher won't require you to pay extra for this bonus - you got it thrown in for free. Unless, of course, there's a fee for publishing the paper. Caveat scriptor. – tonysdg Nov 10 '15 at 20:48
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"When you paid your fee, you were paying for access to read the paper. As long as that access was provided, then the publisher has met their side of the bargain." That's a very simplistic view that ignores whatever consumer protection legislation may be in force in the asker's country. For example, if the downloaded paper turned out to be literal gibberish, there'd be a very good claim for a refund. – David Richerby Nov 11 '15 at 00:31
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I really don't think the tone of this post is appropriate for a 'helpful' post – Clinton J Nov 11 '15 at 01:31
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Peer review (at least through a well respected journal or publishing company) is a little bit more than a first level junk filter. – theforestecologist Nov 11 '15 at 04:43
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"Peer review is not a guarantee of correctness. It's a first-level junk filter, nothing more." -- then publishers are utterly useless. – Raphael Nov 11 '15 at 08:53
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@Raphael given that over 99% of writing is junk, then publishers are incredibly valuable. If you doubt it, go look at vixra. – 410 gone Nov 11 '15 at 09:13
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@EnergyNumbers Junk is easy to detect. It's wrong not-junk that's important to filter, and doing so for every peer-reviewed, published article you read (for every reader) is a waste of time and money. Hence the peer-review system which should imply the assumption is that what is published (with a reputable publisher) can be generally assumed to be correct. The system does not make sense otherwise, so if publishers don't want to sign their own death warrant they better make sure they stand by that implied promise. – Raphael Nov 11 '15 at 09:17
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The only thing a publisher sells is their reputation. Due to their reputation they can get (reasonably) good editors and (reasonably) good volunteers to do peer review, and due to a consistently (reasonably) good peer review they sustain (reasonably) good papers and sustain their reputation. – gerrit Nov 11 '15 at 11:45
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@DavidRicherby I strongly doubt that anything more then access to the article is guaranteed even in jurisdictions which have very strong consumer protection laws. You might have a claim if the article is mindbogglingly bad (as in obvious rubbish) but otherwise I highly doubt it. – DRF Nov 12 '15 at 09:26
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Expecting peer review to ensure correctness is clearly unreasonable, due to the time it would take to reimplement the method and test it (which is what ensuring correctness would require, as a bare minimum, in my field). While peer-review does perform more than a first level junk filter (at least for reputable journals) it would be unwise to treat peer review as more than a first level junk filter and to remain skeptical of what you are reading. – Dikran Marsupial Nov 12 '15 at 10:05
@Raphael "Hence the peer-review system which should imply the assumption is that what is published (with a reputable publisher) can be generally assumed to be correct." Um....no. I mean, sure, that would be nice. It would be great! It would be a boon for humanity. But it is not the way the world of academic publishing actually works in practice. – Kyle Strand Nov 13 '15 at 00:13
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@KurtTappe There's a long leap from "the paper is wrong" to "the paper is wrong, the publisher knew it, and they wilfully went ahead without retracting it", and there's a lot of evidence of wrongdoing (specifically on the role and knowledge of the publisher) required to go from "you need to retract this paper" to "you should go to jail for fraud". – E.P. Nov 13 '15 at 00:47
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I'm not so sure about this. If the abstract claims "in this paper we prove X", and X is in fact not proven, then it was surely mis-sold if you bought it expecting to read a proof of X. – OJFord Nov 13 '15 at 16:36
@OllieFord You have got a point. Good luck explaining this to the publisher or a court. You've got a chance, for the publisher, it's cheaper to give some sweet (=refund) to you than to argue with you. – yo' Nov 13 '15 at 18:46
@yo' Oh, absolutely, I'm not even close to a lawyer. I'm sure there's some subtlety that makes it fine for them to not refund, I just meant to highlight that it's not as clear-cut as made out to be. – OJFord Nov 13 '15 at 18:48
@tonysdg This answer only says the buyer got a new paper they can write. Publishing it is another matter. ;) – jpmc26 Nov 13 '15 at 23:14
@OllieFord yes, exactly, this could be a case for misadvertisement, and product being a wrong product sold (not just defying expectations). Misadvertisement is legally regulated at least in some countries (then the question would be where's the publishers based). – puslet88 Jan 26 '16 at 09:11

score 50 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 14:12

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You can ask for anything you want, but you will not get a refund. The terms and condition of the site where you purchased it most likely clearly stated that it wasn't an option.

One example from Taylor & Francis:

The content in this site is provided "as is" and without warranties of any kind either express or implied.

Taylor & Francis Group Ltd do not warrant or make any representations regarding the use or the results of the use of the content in this site in terms of their correctness, accuracy, reliability, or otherwise.

And another piece of sound advice:

If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use this site.

More generally, the money you pay for the article is strictly for its publishing, the actual research that resulted in a "major flaw" was paid via other channels, on which it's very unlikely that you'll have any direct influence. The people making the original claim about the content of an article, and taking responsibility for it, are the authors not the publisher to which you paid the fee.

If you witness that a given journal has consistently low acceptance standards, make sure to notify your institution's library, they might consider resigning subscription if they gather enough similar complaints.

Sadly, for the occasional 20 bucks you consider wasted for that article (I'm sure this is purely fictional, there are many ways of getting subscription journal's content without paying for it) there are 10 unscrupulous scholars, somewhere who use 3000$ of your tax money to publish complete rubbish in an open access journal. And here the perspective of a refund is nonexistent.

edited Jun 10 '20 at 14:12

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answered Nov 10 '15 at 17:01

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Ah, the marvels of the legalese "as is with no implied warranty"... – Mindwin Remember Monica Nov 10 '15 at 17:32
@Mindwin sounds pretty straightforward to me. – Cape Code Nov 10 '15 at 19:10
It is. but I liked "caveat emptor" more. – Mindwin Remember Monica Nov 10 '15 at 20:09
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Many organizations claim that they're providing goods or services with no warranty; this is often at odds with consumer protection legislation. The simple fact that they claim to offer no refunds doesn't mean that's legally viable. – David Richerby Nov 11 '15 at 00:28
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@DavidRicherby Makes me wonder if their TOS was peer reviewed. ;-) – BrainSlugs83 Nov 11 '15 at 00:51
@BrainSlugs83 Probably, but maybe as well as the article in question. – Raphael Nov 11 '15 at 08:55
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@DavidRicherby : Consumer protection law does not protect academia. The exact boundaries of consumer law can't be explained in this comment, but in general the law is restricted to natural persons. Most researchers don't pay for the access themselves, and for that reason alone can't invoke consumer law. – MSalters Nov 11 '15 at 13:30
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@MSalters The implication of the question here seems to be that the article was bought by a natural person, however. No point in asking for a refund if you weren't the one paying for the article in the first place, and in fact doing so would probably be fraud. – JAB Nov 11 '15 at 15:58
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@MSalters The question says "I bought". But I agree that, if that's a short-hand for "I got my employer to buy on my behalf", then it's a whole 'nother ball game. – David Richerby Nov 11 '15 at 19:53
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I'm confused about where the notion that "tax dollars" have anything at all to do with published academic papers, comes from? It seems a complete red herring. – dwoz Nov 13 '15 at 16:51
@dwoz I'm confused about where else do you think the money comes from. – Cape Code Nov 13 '15 at 19:14
I wonder if there would be some leeway in considering it as a mismatch between abstract and contents, and in this sense as false advertisement. Since because of the content problem, the abstract doesn't deliver what it was promised and you were given false information on the purchase. The paper is not broken (cf. warranty statements), but it is just not what was promised. Any thoughts? – puslet88 Jan 26 '16 at 09:06

Viktor Toth · Answer 3 · 2015-11-11T05:01:43.113

The publisher does not guarantee that the article has no major flaw. Indeed, for all they know, the reason why you requested access to the article in the first place was to refute it. Or to check other people's criticism of it.

Also, consider how many articles there are that are wrong yet of great historical interest. One example that pops into mind is the papers Einstein published before November 1915, containing his "work in progress" on general relativity, including some blatantly flawed thoughts.

So no, I do not believe you are entitled to a refund. You certainly don't have a legal basis, but I don't believe you have a moral basis either.

I can, however, imagine a scenario in which you might be legally entitled to a refund: if the article in question was based on fraudulent research, and the publisher was complicit in the fraud (e.g., the paper remains available for a fee even after it has been demonstrated unambiguously that it represents fraudulent research). Respectable publishers retract such papers. Other publishers... well, good luck with them.

Corvus · Answer 4 · 2015-11-12T05:40:31.550

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There is a case where I think you might have a very strong moral claim even if not a legal one: if the paper is retracted, there is no question that you ought to be able to obtain a refund.

Addendum One argument contrariwise: The last science needs is any further disincentive for publishers to retract papers. Maybe better for the enterprise as a whole to have a few readers get cheated than to have fraudulent and otherwise untrustworthy papers remain in the literature.

edited Nov 12 '15 at 05:40

answered Nov 10 '15 at 19:08

Corvus

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I didn't downvote, but this seems overly optimistic. Other comments and answers about "no implied warranty" I think are more likely the way things would play out. – paul garrett Nov 10 '15 at 19:38
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Hence the qualification. It's not overly optimistic to say that you have a moral right. It's overly optimistic to think that the publisher would respect it. – Corvus Nov 10 '15 at 19:50
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How about false advertising: The abstract claims a demonstration of X, where no such demonstration is available. – Joshua Nov 10 '15 at 19:51
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Did "The Lancet" refund the buyers of that autism article? Because the damages are still piling up to this day. Measels, anyone? (http://www.cmaj.ca/content/182/4/E199.short) – Mindwin Remember Monica Nov 10 '15 at 20:12
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@paulgarrett If I buy a car and it gets recalled due to major flaws, I sure as hell get a refund. Why would the rules be different here? – Raphael Nov 11 '15 at 08:58
@Mindwin That would be an interesting lawsuit. Publisher, authors and reviewers should all be on the title. – Raphael Nov 11 '15 at 08:58
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@Raphael I would at least hope that the consequences of that wrong publishing could *vaccinate* (pun most intended) the community against poorly done peer reviewing. – Mindwin Remember Monica Nov 11 '15 at 12:01
@Raphael Reviewers absolutely should not be held responsible. In general, most retractions are due to issues that fooled even the authors -- or due to deliberate misconduct. Unless reviewers redo the original experiments, re-code the original code, etc., we cannot possibly expect them to catch either of these classes of issues. And if you add significant liability to the unpaid job of reviewing, the whole system collapses. – Corvus Nov 11 '15 at 15:45
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@Corvus Depends on the kind of fault, yes. And when/how it's caught eventually, and if the reviewers could reasonably be expected to catch it at the time of review. Accepting a paper with obvious methodological flaws or results that should be reproducible but are not (e.g. CS algorithms paper without code) is misconduct on the reviewers parts, and they should be accountable for that. – Raphael Nov 11 '15 at 23:20
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@Raphael I totally disagree. Have you ever tried to recruit reviewers as an editor? It's hard enough already. Have you caught every obvious mistake in every paper you've reviewed? I haven't. Have you made enough money reviewing papers to pay damages if you were held financially accountable? I haven't made a penny. You're expecting way too much of peer review--and placing these kinds of burdens on it would cause the system to collapse entirely. No way I am going to donate a two days a month to reviewing if I face legal repercussions for mistakes despite acting in good faith. – Corvus Nov 12 '15 at 05:35
@Corvus And what do you propose we do about deliberately sloppy reviewers? And don't tell me they don't exist -- we've all gotten the "has not read the paper" review. And we've all read the (conference) paper that was apparently accepted for its flashy headline. Currently, there is zero accountability -- not even for the authors, most of the time, since few bad papers are ever called out. Published, on the record, cool, next. What do you propose? How can we (re)establish trust if nobody but idealists strives to ensure quality? – Raphael Nov 12 '15 at 08:19
@Corvus By the way, I was not necessarily proposing legal or monetary consequences. Researchers' currency is their reputation, so hit that. Imagine if we had a public record of everybody's reviews with accept/reject stats and error quotas. We could even employ machine learning to uncover reviewer misconduct (reject competitors, accept friends). – Raphael Nov 12 '15 at 08:22
@Raphael I do agree that hitting reputation is better than legal or monetary consequences -- but even there, why would anyone ever agree to provide a review?. The system is about to crumble as is. I edit at very top-tier journals and even there I have to send out two review requests to get one reviewer. It's far worse down the hierarchy. As for ML, I strongly oppose almost all forms of dragnetting for misconduct. People who do so very rarely worry enough about the chance of or consequence of their false positives. – Corvus Nov 15 '15 at 04:53
@Corvus If we can't manage to have a reliabe review system/culture that punishes mistakes in some way (i.e. encourages quality) I'd say we have larger issues. You seem to say, "our peers do not enough enough integrity (on average) for your system". Well, let's address that issue then. (By the way, one thing that can help any review system is to publish less. I know of subfields of CS in which absurd numbers of incremental articles are pushed out, each of which takes reviewer time. Restrict everybody to three articles per year, and nobody has to review more than nine articles per year.) – Raphael Nov 15 '15 at 09:45
@Corvus Regarding machine learning, that's tangential. Suffice to say that -- of course -- you'd use ML to generate candidates which you can then investigate using rigorous statistics. If we believe in statistics enough to build science on top of it, we should also trust it to identify patterns in reviewing activity. – Raphael Nov 15 '15 at 09:46

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 13 '15 at 16:58

There's only a few narrow reasons you might demand a refund in this case: first, if the download/manuscript was somehow damaged or malformed, e.g. pages missing, or somehow "broken"; secondly, if the precis you used to make the purchase decision described something fundamentally different than what the paper delivered; third, if there was something fraudulent about the paper.

Being "incorrect" or "false" is different than being "fraudulent."

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Nov 13 '15 at 21:47

To be successful in a request for a refund, either the publisher would have to be remarkably generous, or they would need to conclude that it is in their best interest. I'm skeptical that appeal to threatened "public hue and cry" would persuade them, since academic publishers are generally immune to negative publicity. A potentially more powerful motivating force would be legal pressure, for which I see two bases. One would be fraud, where the publisher knowingly represented falsehoods as truth. It would be challenging to establish fraud. The second is via warranty of merchantability (in the US enshrined in law via the Uniform Commercial Code article 2). In some cases, e.g. Taylor & Francis (following the lead of every known software producer), publications are offered as-is, in which case you have no option. Any product without an as-is disclaimer carries a warranty, to the effect that if the seller knows (or should know) that the item is used for a particular purpose, then the item is fit for that purpose. This is why one can sue a company for negligence, if they sell something as fit for a purpose when it is not.

In order to make any traction with a threat for violating the implied warranty of merchantability, you would have almost certainly have to enlist the aid of lawyers willing to help you pursue the matter. The two main things that you would have to objectively establish is that the article has a known purpose, and that the article actually is not fit for that purpose. I don't believe that you would have to establish that the publisher was aware of the defect (I'd like to be more assertive about that, but that's what lawyers do).

If you just email them asking for a refund, they will probably say that they don't make any guarantees. However, if your attorney uses suitable language, they would probably reply that they have a stated as-is policy (you're out of luck), or, that there is no way they could know of the mentioned purpose, or that the article is in fact fit for that purpose. Since "merchantability" isn't defined under the law, courts would generally compare the item in question against comparable products. The reason is that no product can be absolutely flawless, and a claimed based on merchantability would have to show that the product was egregiously defective, not just less than satisfactory.

That all said, you did not actually purchase "the article", you purchased a license to copy the article in a particular manner, for which reason it is not clear that UCC article 2 is applicable.

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Nov 10 '15 at 21:31

If you are just looking to get your money back, then I am afraid it is not worth an effort; you probably will spend more on the telephone calls than they charged you for the article.

However, it could be nice to set a precedent like this: to request a refund and eventually to sue a lazy publisher, who do not bother to introduce a proper level of scrutiny in their peer review process, and instead charge the authors to publish some bogus papers and then charge the readers to access them. I have no idea whether or not such a case can win (and I guess it depends on jurisdictions). The question just adds to the bigger question of very complicated relations between academic publishers and academia.

Can I get a refund if I bought an article that contains a major flaw?

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