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I am moving from one job to another (postdoc to tenure track) this summer and I have papers in several stages of being written, these go from handwritten notes with all the necessary arguments to under revision at a journal. All the papers will have my new contact information put on them but where is the line for changing affiliation? It seems obvious to me that the one that is still in the handwritten notes stage will get the new affiliation and that the ones under revision won't. So somewhere in between is a line.

Where is it?

There are some similar questions so far (see here and here but they do not seem to be quite the same situation since I am not changing fields and the appointments are not concurrent.

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    Now at: [insert institute here].
    – gerrit
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 15:54
  • @gerrit yes, that's how to indicate a new mailing address but the question I am interested in is how much of the work has to be done at the first institution for it to to be listed as an affiliation?
    – BSteinhurst
    Commented Jul 15, 2013 at 17:03
  • 9
    When in doubt, just list both affiliations.
    – JeffE
    Commented Jul 16, 2013 at 1:43

3 Answers 3

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I would argue that it's a question of resources—if you have used resources (equipment, personnel, computers, financial) of both institutions in executing the paper before its initial submission, then you should list both institutes as supporting the work.

On the other hand, if the core of the work—both research and writing—were done at the old institution, then the new institution should only be listed as a "present affiliation," rather than as a "co-sponsor" of the work.

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    Suppose some significant piece of code was written at institution A, but the paper was entirely written later. Should institution A be listed as an affiliation? What if the code is in a library that will be reused indefinitely? How long (or how many publications) is enough to stop listing A as an affiliation?
    – Jed
    Commented Jan 22, 2014 at 6:28
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    The affiliations list where the work was done. If you wrote the code at A and the paper at B, then both should be listed. You stop listing A when you're no longer directly talking about work done at institution A. (I'd argue just using a library written at A is not the same as writing a paper about the library; citing work at A doesn't mean you should list A as an affiliation.)
    – aeismail
    Commented Jan 22, 2014 at 9:21
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It is not necessarily clear cut. As a principle I would say that the affiliation should be where you have done most of your work. It is, however, also possible to use two affiliations and set your new location as "present address:" (or affilaition). After all, the affiliation serves two purposes. For a university (department) it means something becomes associated to them. For you, though, it means people can find you if they have, for example, questions. So, using the double affiliation, if it is possible, might be a good idea in the grey zone. Otherwise, I would stick with "where you did most of the work", however you wish to define it.

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Your name and affiliation are listed on publications to identify you and to facilitate contact. Thus, I believe your new institution should be listed, rather than your old. Your old institution can be credited in the acknowledgements. Given that any affiliation listed might become outdated, you can also list your personal email address and your personal website URL. (A personal domain name and web hosting are very cheap.)

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