Springer Nature has announced the launch of its inclusive author name change policy, which will enable transgender authors and those authors at risk to retroactively update their name on the version of record (VOR) and associated metadata in all Springer Nature journals, books and conference proceedings.
Trans authors often face a lengthy and very public process, often with associated personal and professional risk, when seeking to correct their publication record. By providing those authors with the tools and support to do this silently and safely, Springer Nature aims to redress these challenges for authors and to further drive forward the need to eliminate these systemic barriers within the academic community.
The policy seeks to make name changes: comprehensive across all relevant search systems and across the version of records and associated metadata; silent so that readers will not be aware that a correction to an author’s name has been made, with authors given the option of the change being silent or flagged; inclusive as to allow name changes for various reason ― principally to serve the needs of transgender scholars but also other reasons such as religious reasons; and cascaded without unnecessary burden on authors to update abstracting and indexing sites.
As part of this policy, biographical information, including pronouns and author photographs, will be corrected as needed to reflect the change.
Springer Nature will be implementing this policy across all of its scholarly journals, magazines, conference proceedings and books. The policy forms part of the publishers’ continued commitment to supporting DE&I and collaborating with its communities to ensure that this support enables and promotes a more equal and inclusive culture in academic research.
Click here to read the original press release.
