Resources for Authors

This section includes resources for authors: A list of publishers and journals with existing name change policies, links to articles and editorials we’ve written, as well as email templates for reaching out to publishers.

Existing Policies

We have created a public spreadsheet of publishers or journals with existing name change policies. It includes links to the full policy as well as at-a-glance information on whether each policy is compatible with the guiding principles described in our guest post for the Committee on Publication Ethics. If you are aware of any policies missing from that spreadsheet, please let us know!

Articles & Editorials

Queer, Trans and Gender Diverse Metadata Resources:

Check out these resources by metadata professionals for your own reference or for sharing best pratices with publishers:

Metadata Best Practices for Trans and Gender Diverse Resources

This document is the result of a year of work and collaboration by the Trans Metadata Collective (TMDC; https://transmetadatacollective.org/), a group of dozens of cataloguers, librarians, archivists, scholars, and information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the description and classification of trans and gender diverse people in GLAMS (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Special Collections). The Collective’s primary goal was to develop a set of best practices for the description, cataloguing, and classification of information resources as well as the creation of metadata about trans and gender diverse people, including authors and other creators

Best Practices for Queer Metadata

This document is the result of two years of work by a group of nearly one hundred knowledge organisers, cataloguers, librarians, archivists, scholars, and information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the metadata treatment of queer people, communities, and items in GLAMS (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums, and Special Collections) and other informational institutions. Their work has been supported by over 800 peer reviewers; combined, these groups make up the Queer Metadata Collective (QMDC).

The QMDC builds upon earlier work done by the Trans Metadata Collective (TMDC), a similarly-organised group of metadata workers and information professionals with a concerted interest in improving the metadata representation of trans and gender-diverse people. The work of the TMDC culminated in Metadata Best Practices for Trans and Gender Diverse Resources, focusing on the description, cataloguing, and classification of information resources as well as the creation of metadata about trans and gender-diverse people, including authors, communities, and other creators. Following the publication of the Best Practices, several TMDC members founded and developed the QMDC over the summer of 2022.

This document focuses on metadata by and about queer people, communities, and resources. While there is significant overlap between queer metadata and trans and gender diverse metadata, QMDC’s recommendations should not be seen as excluding or superseding TMDC’s, as trans and gender diverse people, communities, and resources have specific needs. For best practices and recommendations about trans and gender-diverse resources, please consult the TMDC document. If the TMDC and QMDC recommendations conflict (we are not aware of any instances in which they do), prefer the TMDC document for trans and gender diverse resources and the QMDC for other types of queer resources.

Email Template for Authors to requesting name changes

This template might be used to advocate to a publisher with no known stated policy. Amy J. Ko drafted it to reach out to IEEE, and B.M. Watson edited it to be more generic but feel free to edit or adapt it for your own use.

Dear JOURNAL Editorial Board/Editor’s Name, etc.,

I’m an author of a publication in JOURNAL/publications going back to the year 2000 in JOURNAL. Recently, I changed my first name and my pronouns, and I’m contacting all of the publishers of my published works to have them fixed, replacing my deadname with my correct name, fixing any pronouns, and correcting all papers citing publications using my deadname, which follows the COPE guidance on author name changes. Here’s a link: https://publicationethics.org/news/vision-more-trans-inclusive-publishing-world

I couldn’t find any guidance on the JOURNAL website about a process for correcting my name and pronouns in my publications and in publications that cite them. Does JOURNAL have such a process? If so, can you tell me who to contact about correcting my name and pronouns in my NUMBER of JOURNAL publications? If it does not have a process, who should I ask at JOURNAL to create one, in line with COPE’s guidance? I’d like to stop the researchers who cite my JOURNAL work monthly from spreading my deadname further, ideally as soon as possible.

For background on this request, I recommend the following articles:

Thank you for your help!

(your name/info)

Email Template for reaching out to publication to request a name change policy

Dear JOURNAL Editorial Board/Editor’s Name, etc.,

Recently, a number of scholars published an editorial in COPE (the Council on Publishing Ethics) calling for publishers to introduce, amend, or fix their name change policies for trans authors, who (are still) facing a lot of impacts from publisher policies that are more than a little harmful. Here’s a link: https://publicationethics.org/news/vision-more-trans-inclusive-publishing-world

These policies have also harmed married women who change their names, indigenous authors with name changes, or international authors with misspellings. It’s exciting that the COPE editorial had a big impact on science journals—Science, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, some of Elsevier and others have introduced or begun implementing changes. Here’s Wiley’s page: https://authorservices.wiley.com/ethics-guidelines/index.html and I can provide you some more examples

Some universities have also taken action. For example, here is UF’s: (https://librarypress.domains.uflib.ufl.edu/resources-for-authors/).

As a LIBRARIAN/STUDENT/STAFF/FACULTY MEMBER at INSERT UNI HERE that subscribes to your journal OR that enjoys reading issues of your journal, I was hoping that you might have one too but I was not able to find any sort of policy on INSERT JOURNAL NAME HERE’s website.

Do you have a name change policy that I could take a look at? If not, is the press interested in introducing a policy? If so I could put you in touch with a working group of librarians who are helping to implement these policies.

All the best!

(your name/info)