A manuscript was submitted to a journal and after the review and revision process, it was accepted for publication. However, after the manuscript was accepted for publication, the coauthor stopped answering emails and therefore did not sign the copyright form, or affirm acceptance of the rights and responsibilities of authorship. The journal and production staff tried contacting the coauthor on multiple occasions, but no response was received. The manuscript is ready to be published, but the journal is unable to locate one of the authors of the manuscript to sign the publication form. If a coauthor cannot be located to sign the publication forms, it seems they cannot affirm that they accept the responsibilities as well as the rights of authorship.
Question for COPE Council
- How should the journal best proceed with a coauthor who cannot be located after the paper has been accepted?
Advice on this case is from a small number of COPE Council Members. Most cases on the COPE website are presented to the COPE Forum where advice is offered by a wider group of COPE Members and COPE Council Members. Advice on individual cases is not formal COPE guidance.
The article cannot be published without the necessary consent and signed copyright or licence agreements. Some journals may have a policy permitting one author to sign on behalf of all the authors, but if the journal's policy requires that the forms are individually signed by each other author, then the paper cannot be published.
The editor might like to set a deadline for the author(s) and let them know that the journal will rescind the accept decision if the deadline is not met, perhaps changing to a "withdrawal" if the journal system allows. The editor should make sure all of the coauthors are aware of any decisions. The editor might give the authors the opportunity to resubmit an unchanged version of the article later, subject to meeting all the usual ethical checks before publishing, if the research is still relevant.
The editor could also ask the other authors to find the missing author, or to contact the author’s institution.
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