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JMIR Publications policy on authorship changes post-publication

Editorial Director
Updated

Authorship changes AFTER publication will not be considered without substantive, verifiable information from appropriate institutional authorities regarding the request.

Authors are responsible for ensuring the accuracy and completeness of author metadata and authorship lists before manuscripts are accepted. 

 

Prepare required documents before submitting a change request

Requesting a post-publication authorship change requires specific steps to be completed. Authorship corrigenda are substantively different from normal corrigenda, according to COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) procedures on changes in authorship (see the COPE flow diagram).

For the purposes of this article, authorship changes include any of the following:

  • removal of an author
  • addition of an author
  • change of authorship order
  • change of corresponding author. Note that JMIR Publications does not display more than one corresponding author. (See: Can there be two corresponding authors?)

According to COPE requirements, you are required to provide ALL of the following:

  1. A letter containing these required items:
    • explanation and justification for why the author was omitted in the first place;
    • signatures of all coauthors declaring that they agree with the authorship change; AND
    • confirmation that all authors fulfill the ICMJE Authorship Criteria, particularly in the situation of author addition; AND
    • date of signatures, or date of the letter (date of signatures is strongly advised).
  2. Additional supplementary documents that consist of original official and verifiable information from appropriate institutional authorities about the request. Such documents must directly substantiate the reasons for the request that are written in the letter. 

 

How to submit documents to request an authorship change

Without above required documents, requests for authorship changes after publication will not be reviewed or considered. There will be no exceptions to these requirements.

JMIR Publications staff will review such requests on a case-by-case basis to ensure compliance with publication ethics best practices regarding authorship according to COPE and ICMJE. However, this does not guarantee that authorship changes will be permitted. 

If an authorship change is needed after publication, a corrigendum needs to be submitted by the authors. Unfortunately, we cannot change a scientific record on the basis of a simple email. 

For details see How to submit a corrigendum (correction) or addendum.

Additional information required:

  • The title of the corrigendum must be "Authorship Correction: (old title)". In the corrigendum text to be published, describe which author has been added and at which position (after/before which author), and briefly the reason ("was inadvertently omitted").
  • Also mention whether or not the Acknowledgments or Conflicts of Interest section need to be changed due to the additional author, or how the addition affects any potential "equal contribution" footnotes.
  • An Author Contributions statement must be added, if not already present, or revised accordingly in alignment with the signed letter and reason(s) for the authorship change. See: What is the "Authors' Contributions" section? How should I write mine?
  • The corrigendum needs to be submitted as new submission with all new authors in the correct order and with ORCIDs/affiliations as in the original submission, with the new authors added (or author removed).

 

Unless the inadvertent omission or addition of the author was the responsibility of the editorial office (which is unlikely, because authors must enter all authors in the submission/metadata form upon submission), there is a charge of $190 for publishing an authorship correction and updating the relevant databases such as Pubmed. We therefore urge authors to carefully proofread the galleys for errors including omissions of authors before publication.

 

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