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Name change policy

As part of our commitment to addressing the needs of all research communities to improve diversity, equity and inclusion, Sage has introduced a policy to enable name and pronoun changes for our authors. Going forward, all requests to make a name or pronoun change will be honored. This includes, but is not limited to, name changes because of marriage, divorce, gender affirmation, and religious conversion. Sage will not publish a correction notice, nor require any form of proof or supporting documentation.
 
Changes to the published academic record have been difficult to implement since, traditionally, changes are limited to correcting author or publisher errors, and require publication of an accompanying notice. We have worked with our publishing partners to remove this barrier in order to support privacy.
 
The relevant papers will be 'republished', meaning that they will be fully replaced online, and that their indexing metadata (which affects how the author list appears in PubMed, Web of Science, Google Scholar, etc.) should subsequently be updated accordingly. This replaces the author name fully, yet ensures that citation information such as the DOI for the paper remains the same. All previous citations to the paper remain valid.
 
In order to enable co-authors to update the way they cite the paper in the future, we recommend informing them of the name change to the article. Sage will contact the co-authors on the author’s behalf, the author may prefer to contact the co-authors themselves, or they may opt not to inform them at all.

Please note that misspellings or other errors in an author’s name in published papers will be managed following Sage’s usual postpublication corrections policy. Outdated affiliations or changes to email addresses that are not due to changes to the author’s name will not be updated.

Important: Over time, Sage will be working to refine and improve this policy, and in particular to get closer to the guiding principles outlined in ‘A vision for a more trans-inclusive publishing world: guest article’, published on the COPE website. While our current process for handling name change requests does not guarantee removal of the author’s previous name from all public-facing records, as recommended in the COPE article, we are currently exploring what systems and infrastructure improvements can be made to allow for more of these changes in the future.

As with other forms of misconduct, Sage reserves the right to investigate and act against misuse of this policy.

Requesting a change

To request a name and/or pronoun change, please fill out the form below with your request, the DOIs of the manuscript(s) in question, and confirmation as to whether or not you permit Sage to contact the co-authors to inform them of the change. The completed form will be sent to a dedicated inbox, which is accessed and managed by no more than two or three employees at any given time. The author will be sent a proof with the changes and asked to review and approve it before publication. We are committed to implementing the updates promptly and confidentially, in recognition of the potentially sensitive nature of these requests.
We aim to prepare the revised proof of the article within 5-7 business days. This may take longer in cases where we do not have editable files, such as for older articles.
Once your corrected article has been republished, it will also be redelivered to indexing and abstracting databases (see the journal's website > Journal Information > Abstracting/Indexing for the specific abstracting/indexing databases used by the journal). Any PubMed entries will be updated manually by Sage. Please note that while Sage will redeliver the article, databases may vary in whether or how quickly they make the change on their end. Authors may also wish to update references as they appear in reference databases such as Mendeley and Web of Science.
Please note that corrections will not be processed through this form. All correction requests should go to your production editor.
*Please note this information is optional and collected to note where in-text adjustments should be made where they are not immediately apparent (e.g. the sole author's name).

See 'Our Post-Publication Name Change Policy, Explained' for more info on Sage's policy.

We are collecting feedback and suggestions for the Sage name change policy anonymously via this form. More generally, anyone with ideas for creating a more diverse, equitable and inclusive publishing environment, or for connecting DEI-supporting research with those who can use it to improve society, is encouraged to send suggestions to info@sagepub.com.