Frontiers corrects authorship record on South Korea zoo welfare study
Bottom line
Frontiers in Veterinary Science has published a correction to a May 19, 2026, zoo welfare study that assessed 11 species across 16 South Korean zoos using the Modified Animal Welfare Assessment Grid, or M-AWAG. The correction, published in September 2026, appears to update the scholarly record around authorship and corresponding author information, while the original article remains online with a correction note and a corrected date of September 25, 2026. The underlying study itself reported that environmental, psychological, and procedural welfare scores were consistently poorer than physical scores, and linked some welfare measures with illuminance, temperature, humidity, and sound levels. (frontiersin.org)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals working in zoo, wildlife, and welfare settings, this is mostly a publication-record correction rather than a change to the study’s findings. But it also highlights how visible authorship and correspondence details matter in welfare science, especially for papers that may inform inspector training, facility oversight, and environmental management. Frontiers’ publication ethics state that incorrect author lists and missing affiliation details are considered major corrections that warrant a separate linked correction notice and reindexing of the corrected article. (frontiersin.org)
What to watch: Watch for the final formatted correction notice and any indexing updates in databases that clarify exactly how the author and correspondence record changed. (frontiersin.org)
A South Korean zoo welfare paper published in Frontiers in Veterinary Science has been formally corrected, with the journal issuing a separate correction article tied to the original May 19, 2026, study on 11 species across 16 zoos. The correction notice was accepted on September 7, 2026, and the original article now shows a corrected date of September 25, 2026, signaling that the update affects the publication record rather than introducing a new dataset or revised conclusions. (frontiersin.org)
The original research examined welfare conditions in South Korean zoos using the Modified Animal Welfare Assessment Grid, or M-AWAG, alongside measurements of temperature, humidity, sound, illuminance, and odor. The authors positioned the work against a changing regulatory backdrop in South Korea, where the paper says the 2023 amendment to the Zoo and Aquarium Act introduced a licensing system modeled on the UK framework. The study also notes that South Korea had 114 registered zoos in 2023, with more than half described as small indoor zoos, a point the authors tied to broader public concern over welfare conditions. (frontiersin.org)
In terms of findings, the original article assessed animals during July and August 2020 across 16 facilities selected from 109 registered zoos at the time. Three trained inspectors, including a wildlife veterinarian, a longtime keeper, and an animal welfare researcher, conducted the assessments, and the reported inter-rater reliability was 0.942. Across species, physical welfare scores were better than environmental, psychological, and procedural scores, suggesting that husbandry context and management systems may be more problematic than overt physical health alone. The paper also reported statistically significant associations between some microenvironmental variables and welfare indicators, including links involving sound levels, illuminance, humidity, and food or activity measures. (frontiersin.org)
What changed now is the article metadata around authorship and correspondence. The correction notice is listed under HyeJin Kang and identifies the piece as a correction to the original article. The original paper currently lists the citation as “Kang H (2026)” and includes a correction banner, while the searchable Frontiers article listings show the May 2026 original research article with two authors, Hyejin Kang and Seung Aee Ma. That mismatch strongly suggests the correction was issued to clarify the author list and corresponding author details, consistent with the source note provided for this story. (frontiersin.org)
Frontiers’ own publication ethics help explain why this kind of update gets a standalone notice. The publisher says incorrect author or contributor lists and missing affiliations qualify as major corrections, which trigger a separate correction article, an update to the original paper, a corrected date, and reindexing with relevant databases. In other words, even when the science itself is unchanged, the authorship record is treated as part of the integrity of the scholarly record. (frontiersin.org)
Why it matters: For veterinary professionals, especially those involved in zoo medicine, welfare auditing, and policy, the correction does not appear to undermine the paper’s practical takeaways. The study still adds to a growing body of work showing that structured, animal-based welfare assessment can surface deficits in enclosure environment, behavioral opportunity, and procedural management that may not be obvious from physical health checks alone. That’s particularly relevant for veterinarians who are asked to support licensing, inspections, or welfare improvement plans in mixed-species collections. (frontiersin.org)
The broader significance is methodological as much as editorial. Zoo welfare assessment remains difficult because of species diversity, variation in facilities, and the lack of universally standardized tools, a challenge highlighted both in the Frontiers paper and in broader reviews of zoo welfare assessment. The South Korean study’s use of M-AWAG and trained inspectors offers one model for making cross-facility comparisons more systematic, even if the authors also acknowledge limits such as the short summer-only study period and single-time-point environmental measurements. (frontiersin.org)
What to watch: The next step is the final formatted correction notice and downstream database updates, which should make the authorship and corresponding author record fully consistent across Frontiers, indexing services, and citation databases. For the field itself, the bigger watch item is whether this work helps shape future inspector programs, repeat assessments across seasons, or more formal welfare benchmarks for zoos operating under South Korea’s newer licensing framework. (frontiersin.org)