Journal changed the ordering of the authors. What to do now?

Question

I am facing a very difficult situation. I sent a paper for peer-review in a SCOPUS indexed journal. My supervisor though did not contribute anything rather than reading my draft insisted that I put his name in the manuscript. I had put his name as the second author as otherwise he would stop my funding. Now my paper has been accepted and published online. To my ignorance the journal has re-arranged the author names in alphabetical order making the name of my advisor to appear first.

In our university, it is mandatory for authors to be listed in the order of their contribution. Also it was me who did all the hard work. My advisor had no idea about the reviews sent by the reviewer. Though I had clearly made myself the first author and my advisor as the second author in the TeX file I had submitted for publication, the journal has changed it.

The journal did not send me the page-proof before publishing it online. They just changed the author ordering in the TeX file I had sent and published it as it is. They put my paper in "RECENTLY ACCEPTED" section with no DOI and no VOLUME NUMBER but it is posted online and is accessible.

What shall I do now? I mailed the journal. They are not replying, it's 2 days already.

Can someone please help. Shall I withdraw the paper from the journal?

Answer 1

If the journal's styleguide requires listing the authors in alphabetical order, convincing them to make a change, even--or especially--a one-off one for you is going to be difficult. The university's policy, dumb as it may be, will also be hard to change quickly. As a result, I think neither is likely to be useful for a paper that is already in press.

If your principal concern is your CV, I think you can safely assume that people in alpha-order fields know the convention, and your contribution won't be ignored. This is especially true if author list is solely a professor and a trainee (student, postdoc, etc). If you work in fields where this is less common, you might want to indicate to note that "authors listed in alphabetical order" somewhere in your publication section.

However, suppose you need a "formal" indication of lead authorship, (e.g., to meet a graduation requirement). Could you compromise with a footnote? It's not uncommon to have a footnote indicating that several authors contributed equally; it would be perhaps be a little odd, but not totally impossible, to use one to denote a "lead author." Some fields already use corresponding author to indicate the the largest contribution from the senior authors; you could potentially overload that as well.

Answer 2

You seem to be in a Math department, and are having a problem that is going to effect everyone in that department. I suggest you speak to the chair of the department.

There are journals in mathematics, good ones, that insist on an alphabetical order of authors. This is also the standard in most of pure mathematics. If you have your facts correct, your university has policy that will make it very hard for anyone in pure mathematics to publish. Applied math is a bit different but this still will be a problem.

As an example, the journal Results in Mathematics explicitly requires alphabetical author order.

Answer 3

You should wait for the proofs. If you do not want to wait, ask the managing editor of the journal when will you get the proofs. Your article is not published yet. What you see is the online pre-publication.

Answer 4

ok after the clarification in the comments I'll post it as an answer. Like I said, the "The journal did not send me the page-proof before publishing it online" part seems very odd. Some journals do put early "just accepted" versions of the accepted papers online, and only then send the proofs to the authors. The fact that there is no DOI yet is in line with this too. Please check the e-mail where the editor informs you about the paper acceptance: there might be something about the page proof coming soon. When returning the proof, you can raise the issue about the order of authors.

Answer 5

tl;dr:

1. Your supervisor will know what to do.
2. For the long run, change the rule.

In our university, it is mandatory for authors to be listed in the order of their contribution.

This is highly unlikely, as it is not the university which decides on publication order conventions. I would suspect this is at most a guideline or default suggested order.

It's also not very useful to ask us. I mean, mathematicians, theoretical computer scientists etc. from your university have published in the past, despite this clash in author ordering rules, right? Well, do what they usually do. Your supervisor will know the appropriate course of action, for sure.

Generally, the whole ordering-by-contribution business is unfortunate IMHO; and at least in Math and a few other fields it is not the norm and will not simply be accepted/ignored. So, if this kind of rule snuck into the university's regulations - you should ask your supervisor to initiate formal procedures in the university senate or governing body to repeal this rule. Or better yet, ask your advisor to have the math department collectively initiate such a procedure, so that it's not associated with an individual researcher.

Answer 6

This is likely too late for the OP, but in communicating to the university that an alphabetical order of authors is the norm in mathematics, it may help to refer to a statement by the AMS to that effect.

Answer 7

Two days is insufficient for a response (in this instance), you should wait.

Publications are immutable, so correction is perhaps unlikely. You could push forwards on breach of contract grounds. Argue that the publisher has not fulfilled the contract and a correction is necessary.

You likely can't withdraw, once published.

Another solution: Do nothing.

EDIT: It's unclear whether the work is published. If it isn't, just update the camera-ready version.