Q: Can the affiliation be updated for a published paper?

Firstly, congrats on getting published – and happy to know that we had a part to play in it. :-) However, unfortunate to know that the affiliation was missed, even more so if this was a single-author paper. (It is equally unfortunate if this was a multi-author paper, and either yours or someone else’s affiliation was missed.)

The thing is, affiliation typically needs to be provided/included at the time of submitting the paper, and there are multiple opportunities through the life-cycle of the paper to update or include the affiliation, right up to proofing. After publishing, it’s usually not easy to update the affiliation. At the most, the editor could share information of your affiliation with whoever tries to contact you about the paper. So, you can go ahead and share your affiliation with the editor. They may include it (if their system allows/is easy to do and especially if the miss was on their part) or simply save it for later sharing/reference.

For writing to the editor, you may find this resource useful: A practical handbook of templates for communicating with the journal

For more information on affiliation changes, you may refer to these resources:

• Is it possible to change affiliation information after the manuscript is accepted?
• Should I inform the editor about my change of affiliation if my paper has already been published?

And finally, to prevent such misses for future manuscripts, you may keep this submission checklist handy: The importance of manuscript submission readiness checks (with a downloadable checklist)

Hope that helps. Again, congrats on being published!