Timeline for How to get a research paper published after the author has died?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 23, 2022 at 4:22 | comment | added | David White | @bof The math community seems to have largely taken the stance that the surviving co-authors can faithfully make decisions for the whole group. For example, in my post I mentioned the papers Mark Mahowald's coauthors completed and published after he died. For sure he never saw the final version. Paul Erdos is another example. He's co-author on many papers even more than a decade after he died. Ron Graham gave a talk about one where the third co-author was very young, probably a child when Erdos died (1997), and only worked on the project after 2010. | |
| Jun 23, 2022 at 4:16 | comment | added | David White | @AndrésE.Caicedo Thanks for sharing (and for not derailing the main post here with the anecdote). This kind of situation, where the referee is not anonymous and gets credit for substantial work, is what I had in mind for the potential journal I mentioned. And, in that situation, I had in mind that authors would be in touch with the journals and give permissions while still alive. I'm learning a lot from this thread, and I can see that even in the simpler case I asked about, there are real differences of opinion, which I did not expect. | |
| Jun 23, 2022 at 2:39 | comment | added | bof | If a co-author dies after the paper is submitted for publication, and then the referee's report comes proposing substantial changes, we seem to have an impossible dilemma. We have no way of knowing for sure that our dead colleague would have agreed to any changes we might make, but neither have we any way of knowing for sure that he would have agreed to withdraw the paper. | |
| Jun 23, 2022 at 2:34 | comment | added | bof | How is that fair to the co-authors, who presumable devoted their work to the project in the expectation that the results would eventually be published? I suppose that, before engaging in any collaborative work, we should make a written contract with provision for eventualities such as death of incapacitation. | |
| Jun 23, 2022 at 1:45 | comment | added | Andrés E. Caicedo | A small Twitter thread on a related case: twitter.com/AndresECaicedo1/status/… | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 22:23 | comment | added | Timothy Chow | I don't think anyone was imagining that an edited version of the decedent's work would be published/disseminated without the unedited version also being published/disseminated. If the concern is to respect the decedent's wishes, then how do we know that the decedent would be okay with having the manuscripts and notes placed online for public viewing? | |
| Jun 22, 2022 at 21:46 | history | answered | Kostya_I | CC BY-SA 4.0 |