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Suspicious responses to authorship change requests

Suspicious responses to authorship change requests

Question for the Forum 

• Given the concerns about the validity of author D’s emails, how should the journal and the publisher proceed?

Advice: 

The Forum suggested contacting author D directly by telephone, rather than by electronic communication. The journal might also consider requesting handwritten signed agreements from all of the authors.

If the journal’s suspicions are correct, an expression of concern should be published, and author A’s institution should be contacted and asked to investigate. 

The Forum suggested that the journal might consider trying to validate the authors by asking for ORCID IDs from all of the authors or some other form of validation. 
 

Follow up: 

The publisher tried calling author D, but that method proved unsuccessful. After sending several additional emails, author D finally responded from an institutional email address, agreeing to the proposed changes, and the journal published a correction updating the author list. The publisher considers the matter closed.