Many trans researchers change their name to match their gender identity. However, there is currently no clear, simple or standardised way for publications to be updated to reflect this. As a result, many trans authors are caught between losing their publication record and involuntarily being outed. Lilian Hunt explains the existing name change policies and outlines experiences of trans researchers of the current system. She calls on publishers to adopt processes that will allow authors to retroactively change their name and highlights the good practice that the coalition, EDIS- Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Science- has spearheaded.
Currently, researchers who have transitioned and legally changed their name have no clear, simple or standardised way of changing the name used on previous publications to match their updated identity. This could cause issues in having their publication record correctly attributed to them, but also in having to ‘out’ themselves as trans whenever these publications needed listing, e.g. on a CV or grant proposal.
EDIS is a coalition of organisations working within science and health research committed to improving equality, diversity and inclusion. The significance of changing your name to match your gender identity can be a momentous moment in gender transition, and we wanted to support researchers to be able to move away from using their previous name when listing previous work or being cited. We collected first-person testimonies from trans researchers within our professional networks and through Twitter, to better understand their experiences of trying to get publications retroactively changed to their new name and what they needed from publishers.
Investigation of policies and practices
Currently, very few publishers or journals have name change policies in place, and many guiding committees do not have formal recommendations to follow. There are countless forums where researchers discuss how to go about changing their name at ‘X’ journal with varying degrees of success. While most journals do not have name change policies, they often have a corrections policy where the editor publishes an ‘Erratum’ or ‘Corrigendum’ to ‘correct’ the publication record – this language is negative and insensitive in situations where a full name change is required.
The Committee for Publication Ethics (COPE) currently lists one case from 2013 where a researcher asked to change their name on a previously published article. Although in this instance COPE advised the journal that the author should not be allowed to change their name, the committee did touch on name changes in general, stating “It is not unethical to request a change in your name but the editor must be certain that the author requesting the change is in fact the author of the paper, and the editor should insist on proof of identification.”.
One of the most detailed name change policies to date is listed in the Association for Computing Machinery. Their name change policy allows separating identities (to maintain separation between publications with old and new names), linking identities (to link publications published under an old and new name), and updating identities (to replace all publications under an old name with a new name).
These are only two examples that exist publicly. Anecdotally, we have heard that other journals do offer name changes, but these policies are not official. Therefore, the reality is that any name change policy a journal/publisher will implement will be novel and not based on formal guidance from external committees.
Trans researchers are caught between losing their publication record and being outed without permission
There are many times when a researcher might have to list or speak about past publications (job applications, grant applications, even in presentations) and trans researchers shared how this could and had resulted in them being forced into having conversations about their gender identity and transition to explain the differences in attributions. The difference in name is also more noticeable for researchers from countries that have gendered surnames, giving no space to have these conversations at the researchers’ own pace and on their terms.
Researchers spoke of their disconnect with their deadname (many trans people refer to their previous name as a ‘deadname’ to highlight the distress that it can provoke) and their body of work published under it, and the emotional reaction seeing their deadname can cause.
“I would like to associate my papers published under the “deadname”, but I would like it to pass with as much stealth as possible … It would be important for me to have these papers on my record, as they set back my publishing record by 5 years … However, most of the time, avoiding the risk to be outed I do not use them in my CV. Fearing the public disclosure I did not contact the journal, nor did I connect my ORCID IDs yet.” [anon, microbiologist]
The ask from the community was clear – allow researchers to correct their names on previous publications, and any policy or system to support this needed to protect the rights of the researcher to privacy. In addition, we learned of other instances where an inclusive approach to retroactive name changes could be beneficial to others in the instances of marriage, divorce, or religious conversion.
“Whilst name at the time of publication is information that I once volunteered to the publishers, inability for this information to be updated in the context of gender transition, has always represented a breach of my privacy.” – [anon, biophysicist]
Working with publishers for change
EDIS’ vision is for everyone to have equal opportunities and access to a successful career within science and health, its research and its outcomes.
We asked our members to reach out to their associated publishing arms or publishers they had close relationships with to start the conversation and find out 1) whether there were any standard ways of dealing with a name change request and 2) whether they were designed in a way to support the needs of a researcher who has changed their name as part of their gender transition.
Wellcome Open Research was the first publishing platform to respond positively to this call and, in conjunction with F1000 Research and EDIS, they created a policy, which was then assessed and validated by researchers, who have themselves been (or are) in the complicated process of changing their names on publications.
The name change involves two stages. In the first stage, a researcher requests a name change through the editorial office- ID is required to ensure the researcher is requesting a name change for themselves. If this is difficult to achieve, the editorial office will work with researchers to enable them to provide identification on their own terms, for example a letter from their supervisor.
Any change of name will not require a new version of the article to be created; all existing versions will be edited to reflect the change, and the DOI will remain the same. A ‘Notice of Change’ will be posted for transparency, which will not identify whose name was changed in order to safeguard the person involved. For articles that have been indexed, the files will be resent to indexers, who will be responsible to implement the change across their databases.
As we continue to move from print publications to digital formats, the barriers to correcting the academic record are reduced. We strongly encourage all publishers to implement policies allowing name changes on publications, in order to allow research to be inclusive for all.
The full policy can be viewed on F1000Research.
Image credit: Pattern pictures via pixabay
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the LSE Impact Blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please review our comments policy if you have any concerns on posting a comment below.
The American Chemical Society has recently announced a name-change policy that was developed in cooperation affected researchers:
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/pressroom/newsreleases/2020/september/new-policy-will-allow-authors-easy-route-to-change-names-on-previous-publications.html
I’m sorry but simultaneously changing the details of a public document is just incompatible with concealing the fact the change was made.
Consider the contradiction of claiming that new versions of the article do not need to be created but that the name can simply be edited – if you change the name on a PDF, you have created a new version. And issuing a name update to metadata will inevitably out the author as trans since all people have to do is look at the article before and after the change.
There will still be many copies of the previous version of the article – in institutional repositories, on preprint servers, personal websites and (hopefully) lots of other scholar’s computers. Publishers also don’t necessarily send files to indexers – some indexers just crawl their websites or retrieve data via APIs or OAI-PMH. These will not all update seamlessly.
I wish there was a better way, but unless articles stop listing names and just link to ORCIDs (which would be rather dehumanizing, wouldn’t it scholar 0000-0027-8371-9839?), then I am afraid no satisfactory solution can be found.
Let’s assume I am some bigot who wants to discriminate against trans people. With this policy, all I have to do is look out for a Notice of Change and then ask any author of those papers whether they are the trans person? Or with a little bit of detective work, I can just find versions of the article or its abstract from before the date in the Notice of Change and I’ll know for sure.
I looked at the F1000 Research name change policy and it looks clear and you say it has approval from Trans authors who have faced the name change issue. That is all good. It seems incomplete though, as it makes no statement about the case of coauthorship. I wonder if there is an automatic notification of the name change to the paper’s coauthors. If yes, does this not potentially OUT the author in question to them? Is that OK? If there is no autonotification, the other authors might conceivably continue to have and circulate the old version. Is that OK? If the author originally was the author to whom correspondence should be addressed, doesn’t the change potentially OUT them to a wider audience? If the authors were originally listed according to contribution importance and the order is maintained after the change, doesn’t the change also tag them? Is there any way to guarantee that search engines will find their work after the change? Perhaps there needs to be a standard way to notify search engines.
of the change?
Dear William – thanks for much for your thorough comment and feedback on our new name change policy. You are correct that the policy as detailed on our website seems incomplete in terms of co-authorship. In fact, in our internal policy, we do have a step where the corresponding author is made aware that a name change has taken place on the article (this was in the original version of the policy that was approved by trans researchers). However, as you have stated, this is not clear in our policy on our website. In order to make sure that researchers are aware upfront, we will amend the text on our website to inform them that corresponding authors will be notified of the name change with the additional text as follows ‘Researchers may wish to inform their co-authors of the change, for example so that they use an updated offline copy or change the way they cite the publication. Or researchers can rely on our notification email to the corresponding author alone and the updated online version. Please inform the editorial office if we should wait until a particular date to enact the name change to give researchers time to communicate with co-authors if desired.’ We will not keep old versions of the article public; however, unfortunately any name change will be traceable, and therefore, it will be up to trans researchers to decide if they require the name change or not. Regarding your query about search engines – our production team will be responsible for resending any updated files to indexers, but it will be up to the indexers to implement this change across their databases. We hope that they will do so, and that other publishers will join with us to implement name change policies in order to stimulate change across the publishing industry.
In addition to journals, there needs to be consideration of how changes would be incorporated into abstract & citations dBs such as Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar, Microsoft Academic, WoS and Dimensions so that research output and impact metrics are accurately affiliated with authors.
It would be extremely helpful if authors, trans or otherwise, can keep up-to-date email address/contact information. Or have all the journals adopt a mechanism to automatically update contact information of the author as they change their work places. Such change would make a much more impactful change globally in a scientific community, as science advancement suffers by scholars not being able to communicate with one another because of outdated contact information.
That’s the role of ORCID. If you link an ORCID to your papers, people can look you up. Through your ORCID profile, you can share up-to-date contact information and list any other names that you have published under. For women who change their names upon marriage and choose to publish under their new names, ORCID usually solves this problem without the hassle of contacting dozens of journals to issue updates.
Trans authors quoted in this article however, are reluctant to use ORCID because they fear that listing their previous name (or deadname) alongside their current name would make them vulnerable to harassment and abuse. Personally, I don’t see how this can be avoided because all you have to do is look at the CV with a tail of name changes on the publication record, but I guess it is nice that people are trying.
COPE has just posted an update to the case referenced above. The update reads: ‘This case and Forum advice was published in 2013. Recently, the publishing and academic communities have been working to develop new guidance to ensure that authors who are transgender, non-binary, and/or gender diverse can easily update their articles. COPE will be issuing guidance in due course, but in the meantime, this case should not be used to deny the rights of these authors to request that their names be changed on their publications.’
EDIS is now working with and supporting the ‘Trans Name Change Policy Group’ who will be supporting new COPE guidance for all publishers (see December 2020 note linked in an above comment). We wholeheartedly support their work, their voice and the best practice guidance that will be published by them. We will be updating our guiding questions checklist to match and reflect this work, including the worked example. Please remember that the purpose of these policies are not only to support researchers but also to prevent harm, and therefore the goal should always be to create the most inclusive policy. Key changes to note will be how name changes are (or aren’t) signalled on a publication and how corresponding authors are (or aren’t) notified. Please read this article from Theresa Tanenbaum and colleagues addressing common concerns around these points: https://tesstanenbaum.medium.com/towards-a-trans-inclusive-publishing-landscape-893339b9868d