Q: Can I update the funding information on my manuscript after submission?

Detailed Question -

Hi everyone. Could you please let me know if it is possible to update information about the funding bodies after submitting the manuscript? A collaborator didn't mention their funding source until I had submitted the manuscript. Thank you!

1 Answer to this question
Answer:

This would depend on the journal and the system they follow. Not all journals allow this, in which case, you may need to withdraw your manuscript and submit elsewhere. You can check if the journal allows updates by seeing if you can make revisions to the submission form. If not, you will need to contact the journal about your situation. If they are okay with this, they may also guide you on how to do this. Sometimes, they provide a separate link where you can upload the updated form, or they may allow you to do so my mail itself.

If you are worried about contacting the editor for this, you needn’t be: in most cases, editors (or even the admin team) are quite supportive. However, in case they are not, as mentioned earlier, you may withdraw your manuscript and submit to another journal. (In this eventuality, ensure you receive a confirmation of the withdrawal, save this communication, and share this information with the next journal to ensure a clean, transparent transaction both ways.)

Also, to avoid such a scenario for future submissions, it would help to prepare a submission package that is complete in all respects and have a checklist that helps you do this. In which case, you might find this microlearning course helpful: How to prepare a great journal submission package

A final note. Although this seems a genuine oversight, a lapse in providing funding information can at times be viewed as (if not more) seriously as an issue of authorship, as this may be seen as an attempt at concealing a potential conflict of interest. So, again, do be conscious of this for future submissions.

For now, though, hope the issue is satisfactorily resolved, one way or the other.

For some of the points discussed above, you may wish to refer to the following resources: