Q: Can I mention the coauthor's name on a conference paper without their confirmation?

Detailed Question -

I’m going to publish my research at a journal and a conference. The experimental data was obtained by my measurement. However, the coauthor has not been responding to my request for confirmation. In such a case, can I publish the paper with the coauthor’s name but without their confirmation? The coauthor did contribute to the research, so I feel it would not be good if their name is not mentioned or just mentioned in Acknowledgments.

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

It’s great that you are being so conscientious about this. Usually, (co)authors write to us with the opposite kind of problem: that the lead author has removed their name from the paper. :)

Anyway, coming to your query, you can proceed with what you have decided. However, what you can still do is to try contacting your coauthor one last time giving them all the information: that you are including their name without their confirmation after having tried multiple times to contact them for their approval. (You should also save all these mails for future reference.) However, you need to also share this situation with the journal editor and get their views on the matter. We don’t think they will have a problem with this, but some journals can choose to exercise great caution in such matters. If it is “only” a conference proceedings (and not a full journal paper), you should have fewer issues regarding this situation.

Which brings us to another point. As you said this is a conference and this individual is a coauthor, it’s surprising that they may possibly be missing the opportunity to talk about their research (unless the plan was for only you to present the paper). Additionally, if you have intended to present only the preliminary results at the conference (which is usually what conferences are about), you may have to think about how you will write the updated (more complete) paper based on the feedback from the conference. If the coauthor is still not contactable, it may be only you as the author on the paper with the coauthor’s previous contribution then becoming more of ‘significant contribution.’ If that ends up being the case, the future scenario may be a bit more complex than at present. So, you should definitely seek the opinion of the proceedings editor and also the editor of the journal where you will submit the more complete paper, in case the two are different. However, if the two are the same, your problem should be less complicated and the proceedings/journal editor would then be in the best position to guide you.

Finally, as you are gearing up for a conference, you may find the following resources useful. While the first is more about a physical conference, there are some tips there that can also work for virtual conferences. (We are assuming the conference is a virtual conference, as most have been in the post-COVID scenario.) The second is more about networking in general. The last is a new service launched exclusively to help you make the same impact in a virtual conference as in a physical conference. You may learn more about the service through the link provided.

Hope all that helps, and hope you are able to reach a resolution soon, although is a ‘happier’ problem to solve. :)

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