The Curious Case of Max Planck retracted papers. When past scientific practices meet contemporary publishing norms
For historians of science and scholars concerned with digital publishing ethics, this case highlights how contemporary norms can distort historical understanding and restrict access to scientific heritage.
The article investigates why two papers by Max Planck were retracted on Springer's digital platform, finding that the retractions stem from anachronistic application of modern copyright and digitization rules to historical publications, not fraud. It argues that practices like duplicate publication were legitimate in early 20th-century science and that digital infrastructures can limit access to the scientific past.
This article examines the case of two papers published in Naturwissenschaften by the physicist Max Planck that were retrospectively marked as retracted on Springer digital platform. Rather than originating in scientific fraud, these withdrawals appear to result from contemporary digitization and copyright-management procedures applied anachronistically to historical publications. Through an investigation of the circulation history of Planck 1940 and 1942 philosophical essays, the article shows that republication across multiple formats was a common and legitimate practice within the scientific publishing culture of the early 20th century. Such practices only became problematic with the later transformation of the scientific article into a countable and proprietary unit within systems of bibliometric evaluation and commercial academic publishing. This article argues that contemporary notions such as duplicate publication and self-plagiarism are historically situated categories that cannot be applied retrospectively without distorting the historical record. More broadly, the Planck case reveals how digital scholarly infrastructures controlled by large commercial publishers can limit the accessibility of the scientific past. Ironically, the original papers remain accessible today through the nonprofit digital platform Internet Archive rather than through the publisher that originally issued the journal.