Is there a way to edit author name after publication for trans people (at least online)?

Question

I have seen questions about people changing their last names due to marriage but not for trans people. However, for them, it can be much more harmful (and wrong) to always carry their old names forever, although all other kinds of public records can be changed. Moreover, they should not be forced to out themselves every time.

I have asked Elsevier and said it is not possible. What would be some ways to minimize the damage (e.g. search engines, CV, ways to apply more pressure for change etc.)?

I'm not asking for the work to change but if the only author identifier is the name (which is supposed to be immutable but isn't), it doesn't make sense right? It can only add confusion and be harmful, as I mentioned. By minimizing the damage, I mean either replace it or hide it wherever possible (e.g. something like a second edition). I understand all the complications with hard copies, citations etc.

Answer 1

I am the academic referred to in the following answer by Schiphol:

• She edited her preprints to use her correct name. In the new preprints she adds a header with the reference to the published version (in the APA style, which is common in her field and also only uses initials of first names).
• Posted them to the relevant preprint service (PsyArXiv, in her case). PsyArXiv has fields for two DOIs: a "preprint DOI" and a "peer-reviewed publication DOI". The latter points to the older published version.
• She now encourages other researchers to cite her using those preprints and their associated preprint-DOI.

The essence of that answer is correct, the following is an elaboration. The three main points I would make are as follows:

1. Sometimes the journal will agree. In most instances, journals will refuse to alter metadata associated with the paper, but this is not universally true, as noted in Joerg Heber's answer. Some journals do allow this: answers asserting that it cannot be done such as this one are factually incorrect.

2. You can use preprint servers to generate competing metadata. If journals refuse to change their metadata, you are permitted to release your own via a preprint server (in my case, via PsyArXiv). Journal publication agreements will often (not always) offer you scope to do so and you can ask people to share only the version that uses the correct information. What I did was edit the name on my author-accepted manuscripts and posted those.

3. ORCID and Google Scholar can help. I changed my name on both ORCID and google scholar. The latter in particular is useful because the searchability of paper relies heavily on GS in practice, and GS allows you to merge records (e.g., it allows you to merge the preprint version with the journal version and specify which version you consider to be the correct one). Note also that GS indexes personal websites if you post author accepted versions there too (see this question) which will also have some effect.

The above answers the question from a technical perspective.

In addition to the technical aspects, there are some social and practical hurdles to consider when doing this. Most transgender people understand the importance and sensitivity of this issue, as it pertains to our personal identity, mental health and in some instances physical safety. Unfortunately, most people will lack this knowledge and you are likely to encounter resistance. With this in mind, I would add the following suggestions based on my own experiences. I suspect you have considered these issues already (in my experience transgender people almost always do!) but on the off chance that you have not...

4. Discuss with your coauthors. I spoke with my coauthors about my intentions to check whether they had any concerns. What I found is that most people initially didn't understand why it mattered to me but when I explained to them the importance of the issue everybody was fine. Most of my coauthors offered to help me with recovering source code from old manuscripts etc.

5. Don't take it all on at once. I found it distressing to go through the process. I'm old enough to have a lot of papers to edit: there are about 100 papers published under my deadname. Doing the editing brought back a lot of traumatic memories that are psychologically associated with the papers (e.g., one paper is associated with a person who raped me: attempting to edit that one set off flashbacks). This may not be a concern in your case, but many transgender people have trauma histories and those may come into play here.

6. Be patient. What I have noticed as that as more papers have accrued under the correct name, various automated "profiles" have started to use my name correctly.

As a final point, not for the original poster directly, but in service of the deeper goal of making this process easier in the future: I found it easier to solve this problem when people took my privacy & safety concerns seriously, and did not treat this subject lightly.

In light of the fact that there are very real concerns that the transgender members of our academic community have expressed about our safety and personal well being in connection to this issue, it is important that we start pushing to improve these systems and place some pressure on journals to change their practices.

Answer 2

I know of one theorist who did the following:

• She edited her preprints to use her correct name. In the new preprints she adds a header with the reference to the published version (in the APA style, which is common in her field and also only uses initials of first names).
• Posted them to the relevant preprint service (PsyArXiv, in her case). PsyArXiv has fields for two DOIs: a "preprint DOI" and a "peer-reviewed publication DOI". The latter points to the older published version.
• She now encourages other researchers to cite her using those preprints and their associated preprint-DOI.

Answer 3

By design, published works cannot (generally) be edited after publication, since doing so would corrupt the record of those works. (There are some exceptions.) New works can be published under an existing or new name. (Younes explains how to create a relation between an existing name and a new name. I'm unsure whether that's in scope or even desirable, given that some people don't want to create such relations.) Our publishing model will surely evolve in a manner that supports editing of published works, but we're likely stuck with the current model for a couple of decades (assuming new models emerge during the coming decade and widespread adoption follows in the decade after).

Answer 4

At the journal PLOS One, we have “republished” papers if someone changes their name as part of a transition. This will replace the name on a paper completely without changing doi or anything else about the paper, and should subsequently also be picked up by indexing services. We have been doing this on a case-by-case basis as a way of reducing any negative implications on careers by this type of name change (arguments we heard were for example issues with citations or credit).

Answer 5

The published articles/books cannot be edited after publication. Therefore, if a published work contains an error, the only solution is to publish an erratum or even retract it. However, the original publication will still exist. We need to think of a publication as a part of a physical object (i.e. a book) which is distributed all over the world with an ISBN and other identifiers.

In the case of changing the name (for any reason), you can still claim your oldest publications and list them in your CV. What you need to do maybe is contacting famous references indices (e.g. DBLP) to resolve the author ambiguity (please see DBLP Instructions) or you may even change them by yourself in open knowledge bases (e.g. Wikidata). This makes any author identified by a unique identifier (in the corresponding base) instead of his names that are subject to change, encoding issues, synonymy and antonymy.

You can also change your name in Google scholar (check here).

In conclusion, you may publish with your new name and claim all your publications (under different names) in all platforms and knowledge bases / reference indices.

Answer 6

Traditionally, journal publications are archived "as is" and in immutable form. There was no way to change names or, in fact, anything else -- and that was the point of it.

But publishers are understanding that this might be harmful to authors who are in exactly your situation. Some are starting to address this. For example, the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM), one of the largest professional organizations in the US, has convened a task force to address the question, and the recommendations are that authors can request to have their names changed on their publications after the fact, including many years later. This would include altering both all of the metadata stored for each paper, but also the PDF of the actual publication.

I don't know where ACM is with actually implementing this step, but I would suspect that it will be possible within a year. I would also assume that all other big publishers will follow soon.

Answer 7

In July 2021 a partnership called "The Name Change Initiative" to support name changes on past published papers was announced by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which coordinated the effort. The list of participating publishers and institutions is available here, and provides links to several specific policies. Participating institutions will directly support their researchers in the name change process, helping with the administrative difficulties and hopefully alleviating the emotional difficulties involved.

The more broadly applicable development since this question was asked is that many journals' policies have shifted (including those of Elsevier). At least the participating publishers now allow for name changes, and authors can often opt for having the change carried out discreetly without having correction notices issued. This is in line with COPE's recommendations outlined in A vision for a more trans-inclusive publishing world: guest article:

Any publisher who implements a process for trans authors to change their name should work to minimize the disclosure risk to the requesting scholar. This includes foregoing traditional announcements and notices typically associated with updates, corrections, retractions, and errata, both in metadata structures and on changed documents.

Finally, below is the current (as of May 2023) list of publishing organizations and services participating in The Name Change Initiative:

• American Chemical Society (ACS)
• American Institute of Physics (AIP)
• American Meteorological Society (AMS)
• American Nuclear Society (ANS)
• American Physical Society (APS)
• American Society for Microbiology (ASM)
• arXiv
• Canadian Science Publishing
• Clarivate
• eLife
• Elsevier
• Hindawi
• ORCID
• Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS)
• Public Library of Science (PLOS)
• Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC)
• protocols.io
• SAGE Publishing
• Science Journals – American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
• Scopus
• Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)
• Springer Nature Group
• Wiley

Answer 8

In the version control system "git", there is the possibility to "rebase" a history - this corresponds to a rewrite of history. However, it is always warned to use it on private histories and to avoid doing so when a history has been published, because it creates endless confusion.

Same here - do not rewrite history after publication; in the best case it causes confusion, in the worst people will feel gaslighted. Better is you keep your ORCID (I do not know whether you can change your name there) and go from there. Of course, if, as some commenter suggested in a tongue-in-cheek way, you look for ways to disavow your papers, it may make sense to publish the new ones under a different name - then, you would avoid ORCID.