Authors and Affiliations

All information needed to correctly render the author/contributor list as it needs to appear in the article PDF, in the print table of contents, and online should be tagged within <article-meta>, and most of this information is contained within <contrib-group>. Author/contributor names should be captured as structured data. Affiliation and correspondence information should be captured as they appear in the PDF, with all data elements tagged inline.

Each contributor should be tagged in a <contrib> element. The <surname> element should hold the author’s surname/last name/family name. The <given-names> element should hold the author’s given/first name and middle name. The element should hold honorifics or other qualifiers that normally precede a person’s name. The <suffix> element should hold qualifiers that follow a person’s name. The <degrees> element should hold certifications that follow a person’s name. The <role> element should hold the contributor’s job title or role. The @contrib-type attribute should have a value that describes the contributor’s contribution to the article, typically “author”. For example, a person who writes an editorial is the author of that editorial and should have the @contrib-type attribute set to “author”, even though their role may be the editor of the journal.

Each affiliation should be tagged in an <aff> element. All affiliation text should be tagged using the elements for tagging institution and address information. <xref> elements should link each contributor to their affiliations. For journal styles where a superscripted label is used to associate authors with affiliations the label may be placed in a <label> element inside <aff> if the template requires the label to appear in the XML.

Correspondence information should be tagged in the <corresp> element. All address information should be tagged using the elements for tagging institution and address information. An <xref> element with the @ref-type attribute set to “corresp” should link the corresponding author’s <contrib> element to the <corresp> element. For journal styles where a symbol is used to associate authors in the author list with correspondence information, the symbol may be placed in a <label> element inside <corresp> if the template requires the label to appear in the XML.

For example:

<contrib-group>
    <contrib contrib-type="author"> 
        <name>
            <surname>Guy</surname>
            <given-names>Some A.</given-names>
        </name> 
        <xref ref-type="aff" rid="AF0001"/> <xref ref-type="corresp" rid="AN0001"/> 
    </contrib>
    <contrib contrib-type="author"> 
        <name>
            <surname>Presidento</surname>
            <given-names>El</given-names>
            <prefix>President</prefix>
            <suffix>III</suffix></name> 
            <degrees>MD, PhD</degrees>
            <role>Associate Editor</role> 
        <xref ref-type="aff" rid="AF0001"/> 
    </contrib>
    <aff id="AF0001"> 
        <label>a</label> <institution>Arbitrary and Redundant Sciences Department</institution> <institution>Some State University</institution> <city>Fort Nowhere</city>, <state>Colorado</state> <country>USA</country> 
    </aff>
</contrib-group>

<author-notes> 
    <corresp id="AN0001">Correspondence to: Some A. Guy, <institution>Some State University</institution>, <institution>Arbitrary and Redundant Sciences</institution>, <addr-line>1681 Campus Delivery,</addr-line> <city>Fort Nowhere</city>, <state>CO</state>, <postal-code>12345</postal-code>; <ext-link ext-link-type="email" xlink:href="mailto:[email protected]">
    </corresp>
</author-notes>

For contributors that are named as organizations or collaborative groups, the element should be used to hold the contributor’s name. For example:

<contrib contrib-type="author"> <collab>Some Working Group</collab> </contrib>

For anonymous contributors, the <anonymous> element should be used and should contain the text used to describe the anonymous contributor. For example:

<contrib contrib-type="author"> <anonymous>Anon.</anonymous> </contrib>

Special Case: Alternative Forms of Names

Complete contributor names should always be captured in Title Case in the element, as shown in the example above. In cases where the journal style requires the contributor’s name to appear in all-capital letters, or using initials, the element should be used to tag these variations.

Special Case: All-Uppercase Name Formats

We require author names be captured with normal casing rules, but we also need to support journal styles where the authors’ names are presented in all-uppercase (either in the article or on the table of contents). There are situations where automatic styling is not able to create a correctly capitalized version of authors’ names, and capitalization needs to be applied manually. The element should be used in these instances, with a @content-type attribute value “uppercase” on , to hold the manually-styled author name. For example:

<contrib contrib-type="author">
    <name-alternatives> 
    <name> 
    <surname>von Scholar</surname> 
    <given-names>Som</given-names> 
    </name> <string-name content-type="uppercase">SOM von SCHOLAR</string-name> 
    </name-alternatives>
</contrib>

Special Case: Initials

For situations where the journal style calls or the authors’ names to be presented by authors’ initials instead of the full names, the @initials attribute of <given-names> and <surname> should hold the initials of the author’s name. For example:

<contrib contrib-type="author">
    <name> 
    <surname initials="S.">Scholar</surname> 
    <given-names initials="S. G.">Som G.</given-names>
    </name>
</contrib>

There are situations where the initials attribute is not sufficient to capture the authors’ name as it should appear on the table of contents or in citations of the article. In these situations, the <name-alternatives> element should be used to hold the alternate forms of the authors’ name. For example, this authors name appears as follows:

  • in the article: Ignacio Ojeda Martínez de Castilla

  • in the table of contents: I. O. M. de Castilla

  • in citations (last, first): Ojenda, Ignacio

The different abbreviations of this authors’ name should be tagged using the <name-alternatives> element with a @content-type attribute specified for each alternative presentation of the contributor’s name:

<contrib contrib-type="author">
    <name-alternatives>
        <name>
            <surname>Ojeda Mart&iacute;nez de Castilla</surname>
            <given-names>Ignacio</given-names>
        </name>
        <string-name content-type="abbreviated">I. O. M. de Castilla</string-name>
        <name content-type="citation">
            <surname>Ojenda</surname>
            <given-names>Ignacio</given-names>
        </name>
    </name-alternatives>
</contrib>

Non-Western Names and Display Order of <given-name> and <surname>

The parts of a person’s name should be tagged using <given-names> to identify the persons’ given names (commonly referred to by British and Americans as “first name” and “middle name”), and <surname> to identify the persons’ surname or family name (commonly referred to by British and Americans as “last name”). The <given-names> and <surname> elements are both optional, though at least one must be present within <name>, so if a contributor is mononominal or if a contributor is listed using only the persons’ given name or surname, the correct tag should be used and the other tag omitted.

When the <name> element is rendered for display, the <given-names> element is normally placed before the <surname> element. This order can be controlled by setting the @name-style attribute. The default value of @name-style is “western”, which indicates the display order <given-names> followed by <surname>. Setting the @name-style attribute to “eastern” indicates the display order <surname> followed by <given-names>. For example:

<name name-style="eastern">
    <surname>Zhang</surname>
    <given-names>Xue</given-names>
</name>

Contributors Placed at the End of an Article

When the authors of an article appear at the end of the article, as frequently occurs in editorials for example, the authors’ names should be captured twice in the XML. First, the authors’ names should be captured in the <contrib-group> section of <article-meta>. Second, the authors’ names should be tagged in paragraph text where it needs to appear in the text.

Biographies

See Biography for more information about tagging for biographies.

Contributor Identifiers

Contributor identifiers for ORCiD and other networks, when provided, should be tagged in contributor metadata. See Contributor Identifiers for more information.