How to Add, Remove, or Reorder Authors During Peer Review (Before Publication) – JMIR Publications

Changes to authorship after submission and during peer-review:

Please note that the following guidelines are for unpublished papers.

Authorship changes include addition and removal of authors or reordering.

First, please make sure that the new authors really fulfill ICMJE authorship criteria (otherwise they can just be added to the acknowledgement section), see Who should be listed as author and sign the publication form? (authorship criteria). If the authors fulfill all 4 criteria (including having read and approved the final manuscript and being able to vouch for its integrity), please follow the steps below.

If the paper is currently in Review Round 1 and has not received an initial editorial decision, you can edit the authors in your metadata form (How do I edit/correct/enter article metadata before publication?).
After an initial editorial decision has been issued, we have to follow the international Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) process (see links below). For papers in Review Round 2+, any changes to authorship require a letter:
- signed by all original (and additional) authors; AND
- state the reason for the change; AND
- state that all authors agree on the addition (or removal, or reordering) and the new authorship order; AND
- date of signatures, or date of the letter (date of signatures is strongly advised).
- Notify the editorial team of these changes by contacting ed-support@jmir.org.

Please upload this letter signed by all authors as a supplementary file (for editorial eyes only) (How do I upload/add supplementary files (figures, Multimedia Appendix, additional material for reviewers/editors only) after submission?). Please notify the editorial team that you have uploaded this letter by contacting ed-support@jmir.org.

Authors are required to write an Author Contributions statement that includes the complete proposed author list. For information on how to write a complete statement of Author Contributions, see: What is the "Authors' Contributions" section? How should I write mine?

IMPORTANT: All instances of requests for authorship changes after acceptance of a manuscript are required to supply the information above for review. 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.

For JMIR Research Protocols:

To be listed as an author on a protocol or proposal submitted to JMIR Research Protocols, individuals must have contributed directly to the development of the manuscript, in accordance with ICMJE authorship criteria. An individual’s anticipated role in the future implementation of the protocol does not meet authorship criteria for a protocol manuscript.

For example, future contributions of an individual in carrying out steps of the protocol, such as participant recruitment or data collection that has not yet begun (for a PRR1 protocol), does not on its own satisfy the criteria for authorship of the protocol manuscript. Instead, this individual would meet ICMJE criteria for authorship on the results manuscript (RR2), which is published later and references the protocol, or PRR1.

For any paper that has already been published, please refer to this knowledge base article: How to add an author after publication.

COPE guidelines and flowcharts:

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