Overview
- Historians Yves Gingras and Mahdi Khelfaoui rediscovered the removals in late June 2026 and traced DOI and metadata activity back to large-scale digitization from the mid-2000s.
- The Science of Nature (formerly Naturwissenschaften) shows brief notices saying the items were withdrawn for “copyright violation” and the original article pages now display blank pages or empty PDFs.
- Gingras and Khelfaoui argue the withdrawals likely stem from automated copyright and duplication-detection tools applied retroactively to historical reprints and similarly titled items, not scientific fraud.
- The journal’s editor Suzanne Scarlata said she had not known about the retractions and called an algorithmic error the most likely cause, while Springer Nature declined detailed comment and has not restored the files.
- Historians warn that removing public-domain historical texts from publisher archives distorts the scholarly record, reduces access to primary sources, and exposes gaps in how publishers govern digitized backfiles.