Each author usually has at least one or multiple affiliations, which the corresponding/submitting author can edit in the Metadata Form (see How to edit/correct author metadata).
Screenshot A shows how an affiliation is entered into the metadata form:
Screenshot B shows how affiliations are rendered in the final publication as footnotes:
- Please ensure that the units within each affiliation are in hierarchical order from largest to smallest.
- Eg, enter the university name first, then the faculty name, then the department name
- Organizations that are not administratively linked must be listed as separate affiliations.
- If authors have multiple affiliations, all affiliations must be entered (as separate entries). This includes multiple departments within the same university/institution/.
- Do not use short forms or acronyms. Do not abbreviate "Dep." or "Dept.".
- An affiliation like "Nursing" should be changed into "Department of Nursing", and acronyms like "UHN" should be expanded to "University Health Network".
- Affiliations are usually in title case (which means that all words except minor words like "of" or "on" are capitalized. Do not enter information in ALL CAPS or all lower case.
- "Department of Nursing" = correct
- "department of nursing" = incorrect
- All acronyms must be expanded or removed
- There should be only one affiliation footnote for identical affiliations (if the metadata form is completed correctly, this should occur automatically)
- Do not include the postal code (postal code only entered for the corresponding author)
- Do not include the author’s position (eg, director, professor)
Corresponding author information
- Include the corresponding author’s name, degree(s), group/school/department, institution, mailing address (including postal or zip code), phone number, fax number, and email address
- Include the country code in telephone and fax numbers (eg, in North America, the country code is 1)
-
Do not use brackets or hyphens in telephone and fax numbers
Examples:
Corresponding Author: Daniel G O’Shea, PhD
Medical Informatics Group
School of Biotechnology
Dublin City University
Dublin 9
Ireland
Phone: 353 1 700 5584 ext 123
Fax: 353 1 700 5412
Email: name@gmail.com
Corresponding Author: John Smith, MD
Department of Oncology
University Health Network
555 Elm Street
Toronto, ON M5A 1Z6
Canada
Phone: 1 416 987 2323
Fax: 1 416 345 7890
Email: name@gmail.com
Authors With No Affiliation (Patients With Lived Experience)
In cases where an author does not have an affiliated institution, particularly because they are a patient with lived experience or something similar, please use one of the following approved styles:
- "Patient partner" (for example: https://www.researchprotocols.org/2022/12/e42484/authors)
- "Stakeholders with living experience of" (see example: https://www.jmir.org/2023/1/e46396/authors)
See also: