In [this][1] paper the author's have derived field equations for $f(R)$ gravity in the case of a static, spherically symmetric metric (Eq. 2). It appears that they wrote $f(R(r))$ as $f(r)$ for some $f$ where $R$ is the Ricci scalar which only depends on the $r$ coordinate. To me this looks suspicious: the field equations are $$f'(R)R_{\mu \nu} - \tfrac12 f(R) g_{\mu \nu} + g_{\mu \nu} \Box f'(R) - \nabla_\mu \nabla_\nu f'(R) = 0 $$ so surely in the replacement $f(R(r)) \to f(r)$ the equation would become
$$\frac{f'(r)}{R'(r)}R_{\mu \nu} - \tfrac12 f(r) g_{\mu \nu} + g_{\mu \nu} \Box \left (\frac{f'(r)}{R'(r)} \right) - \nabla_\mu \nabla_\nu \left (\frac{f'(r)}{R'(r)} \right) = 0 $$

however the authors seem to have written it as $$f'(r)R_{\mu \nu} - \tfrac12 f(r) g_{\mu \nu} + g_{\mu \nu} \Box f'(r) - \nabla_\mu \nabla_\nu f'(r) = 0. $$

I do not believe they and others could make a mistake like this so it must be something wrong in my thinking, but I do not know what. I cannot confirm this is precisely what they have done but I have implemented these equations in Mathematica and assuming the code is correct (which I was able to check against other sources along with reading over the $f(R)$ field equation function multiple times), I am able to obtain equations very similar, though not identical, to the ones they give with the latter prescription I have described. Tellingly, instead of an arbitrary $f$, a function $f(r) = r$ does not reduce to Einstein's equations. I would appreciate any help in this matter. [1]: https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0603302