Please ensure the corresponding author is correct at submission. Any change in authorship (including order and designations such as corresponding author) requires the written agreement of all manuscript authors, and may be subject to review in line with the relevant COPE guidelines . After an article has been published online, any authorship changes will need to be accompanied by a relevant notice (correction, retraction, expression of concern).

Not all disciplines have a tradition of naming corresponding authors in manuscripts, particularly disciplines where there are typically only one or two authors. However, we use the affiliation of the corresponding author to determine eligibility for open access funding support, including institutional open access agreements, so you will need to declare a corresponding author for all articles, even if they are not named as such in the final publication.

The corresponding author should be the author who is most appropriate to fulfil the corresponding author’s responsibilities. The choice of corresponding author may also affect your manuscript’s eligibility for open access funding support. For this reason, and as a matter of general best practice, we recommend you and any co-authors discuss and agree on article authorship as early as possible in the research process to minimise the risk of misunderstandings and disputes.

Eligibility for open access funding support, including eligibility for institutional open access agreements, is based on the corresponding author’s affiliation on your manuscript. Please ensure the affiliation of the corresponding author is correct at the point of manuscript submission. Eligibility may also depend on the type of article you are publishing, and may be subject to confirmation of eligibility by your institution..

Note that if you are publishing under an institutional open access agreement, the date of your manuscript’s acceptance must be during the term date of that agreement in order for the manuscript to be eligible.

When listing author affiliations, please ensure you are familiar with our author affiliations policy.