Citation Correction Tightens the Record for an Atrial Fibrillation Diagnostic Protocol
A correction in PLOS One has amended the citation for a protocol paper on the diagnostic accuracy of digital technologies compared with 12-lead ECG in adults with atrial fibrillation. The change is narrow but clinically important: the fourth author’s initials were listed incorrectly in the original citation, and the corrected form now identifies the author as J. Moore D. in the reference record. The updated citation also preserves the article’s original focus on atrial fibrillation diagnosis and its comparison between digital technologies and the conventional 12-lead ECG reference standard.
Corrections like this do not alter the scientific question, yet they matter in the architecture of biomedical publishing. A protocol article sits at the front end of evidence generation, where the precise naming of authors supports indexing, attribution, and downstream retrieval in databases that researchers, clinicians, and librarians depend on daily. When an author’s initials are wrong, the consequences are usually bureaucratic rather than biological, but they can still distort a publication trail, complicate citation matching, and separate a paper from the correct investigator profile. In a field as data-driven as digital arrhythmia detection, even a modest bibliographic error deserves a formal fix.
The corrected article concerns a systematic review protocol comparing digital technologies with 12-lead ECG for the diagnosis of atrial fibrillation in adults. That topic sits squarely at the intersection of cardiology, screening, and device-based diagnostics, where accuracy determines whether a patient moves quickly toward confirmation, anticoagulation decisions, rhythm assessment, or further cardiac workup. Digital tools have attracted sustained clinical interest because they can be deployed outside the traditional ECG laboratory, potentially expanding detection into community settings, primary care encounters, and remote monitoring environments. Their value, however, depends on how closely they track the diagnostic performance of the standard ECG benchmark.
The correction notice does not report any change to the protocol’s intent, methods, or clinical framing. Its entire substance is the bibliographic amendment itself. The corrected citation now reads: Sheron VA, Surenthirakumaran R, Gooden TE, Lip GYH, Thomas GN, J. Moore D, et al. (2024) Diagnostic accuracy of digital technologies compared with 12-lead ECG in the diagnosis of atrial fibrillation in adults: A protocol for a systematic review. PLoS One 19(5): e0301729. The correction entry itself carries the later publication details and links back to the related protocol article.
A protocol may look administrative from the outside, but in systematic review practice it is the foundation on which a later evidence synthesis is built. The wording of the title frames the exact patient group, the index tests under study, and the comparator used to judge performance. In this case, the comparator is a 12-lead ECG, still the standard reference for rhythm documentation in routine care. Any future findings from the review will be interpreted through that lens, which is why accurate indexing from the outset matters for searchability and transparency.
The practical consequence of a corrected citation is straightforward: the publication record becomes more usable. Database searches are less likely to fragment the article across variant author strings, and citation managers can align the paper with the correct author sequence. For collaborative multicenter work, especially papers issued on behalf of a named research group, precision in author attribution also protects the historical record of who contributed to the protocol’s design and publication. In a publication ecosystem that increasingly relies on automated harvesting and metadata matching, small errors can propagate quickly if left uncorrected.
This correction also reinforces a broader point about research integrity in cardiovascular diagnostics. The reliability of a review on digital detection tools depends not only on the studies eventually included, but also on the clarity of the bibliographic scaffolding around the review itself. A clean citation record supports discoverability, and discoverability determines whether the protocol can be accurately linked to future results, subsequent revisions, and meta-analyses. In digital health, where devices evolve quickly and terminology can shift across platforms, bibliographic accuracy becomes part of the evidence chain.
The corrected notice leaves the clinical question unchanged: how well do digital technologies identify atrial fibrillation when judged against 12-lead ECG in adults? That question remains central because atrial fibrillation is often intermittent, silent, or detected late, and the promise of digital screening rests on timely recognition. A device that misses clinically meaningful arrhythmia burden can delay treatment, while one that overcalls rhythm irregularity can trigger unnecessary evaluation. The review protocol is positioned to address that balance, but the correction itself is limited to the author citation.
In the end, this publication is a housekeeping correction with real editorial value. It repairs the citation trail for a protocol that will inform future evidence synthesis in cardiology, and it ensures the article is tied to the right author metadata across indexing systems. No clinical results changed, no diagnostic thresholds were revised, and no patient-level findings were added. The only update is the corrected author initials in a paper designed to assess whether digital technologies can stand up to the 12-lead ECG in adults with atrial fibrillation.