Author Affiliation Policy

Journal of Technology Management & Innovation (JOTMI) — Version 1.0. Effective May 2026.

This policy is binding in conjunction with the JOTMI Correction, Retraction, and Post-Publication Amendment Policy, the Authorship, Contribution and Credit (CRediT) Policy, and the Publication Integrity Protocol and Extended Retraction Policy. Where a corrective notice is required under this policy, the form and mechanism of that notice are governed by the Correction, Retraction, and Post-Publication Amendment Policy.

1. Purpose and guiding principle

JOTMI treats author affiliations as an integral part of the scholarly record. An affiliation identifies the institutional context in which the reported research was conducted, and it governs the attribution of institutional support, infrastructure, and accountability. The guiding principle of this policy is that an author's affiliation records where the work was carried out — the institution(s) to which the author belonged at the time the reported research was conducted — and not the author's current or subsequent employment. An affiliation is a historical fact of the record, not a field to be updated as careers change.

2. Author responsibility

Authors are responsible for ensuring that all affiliations are accurate and complete before submission, and for verifying them again at the production and proof stages. The submitting and corresponding authors are responsible, on behalf of all co-authors, for the accuracy of the affiliation information supplied. Where the Journal operates anonymized peer review, affiliations are withheld from the manuscript sent to reviewers and are reinstated from the authors' declared metadata at acceptance; the proof stage therefore requires particular attention to affiliation accuracy.

3. Affiliations are final at acceptance

Once a manuscript is accepted for publication, the affiliations of all contributing authors are final. The proof stage is the last point at which affiliation information can be corrected, and authors must use it to confirm that every affiliation is stated correctly and completely.

4. No retrospective changes after publication

Affiliation details will not be changed after publication to reflect circumstances that arose after the reported research was conducted. This includes, without limitation:

• an author's subsequent move to a different institution;
• a wish to display current employment;
• the addition of research units joined after the work was completed;
• cross-institutional collaborations that were not disclosed at submission; and
• the addition of any institutional affiliation that was not in place at the time of the original research.

None of these alters the institutional context in which the work was actually carried out, and none is a ground for amending the record.

5. The author's current affiliation

An author whose affiliation has changed since the work was conducted does not amend the published affiliation; the affiliation of record remains that of the time of the research. An author's present institution is conveyed through the author's own ORCID record and institutional profiles, which are maintained independently of the article. At its sole discretion, the Journal may additionally record a clearly labelled "present address" or "current affiliation" note that supplements, but never replaces or alters, the affiliation of record; such a note carries no implication of institutional involvement in the reported work.

6. Permissible corrections: verifiable errors only

A change to a published affiliation is considered only where there is a documented, verifiable editorial or production error in recording the affiliation that applied at the time of submission — for example, a misstated institution name, or the omission of a co-affiliation that was declared at submission. A request must be supported by written justification, documentary evidence, and the unanimous agreement of all authors. If approved, the change is published as a formal Corrigendum or Erratum, issued in accordance with the JOTMI Correction, Retraction, and Post-Publication Amendment Policy: as a freely available, independently citable notice with its own DOI, bidirectionally linked to the original article and recorded in the article's metadata.

7. No silent or informal modifications

No affiliation is changed silently or informally. Every approved post-publication correction to an affiliation is issued as a publicly available, citable correction notice that documents the change and its justification. The original article remains the version of record.

8. Institutional credit, funding, and integrity

Requests to add or alter affiliations in order to imply institutional involvement in the research after the fact — for reputational credit, bibliometric gain, or funding attribution — are categorically denied. Institutional affiliation is distinct from funding attribution: financial support is recorded in the funding and acknowledgements sections and is neither conferred nor altered by an affiliation change. A subsequent change of an institution's name (for example, through merger or renaming) does not retroactively change a published affiliation, which reflects the institution as constituted at the time of the work. Affiliations that are fabricated, purchased, or conferred as a courtesy ("gift" affiliations), and undisclosed affiliations bearing on the integrity of the work, are treated as integrity violations and may lead to an Expression of Concern or a Retraction under the Publication Integrity Protocol and Extended Retraction Policy.

9. Standards and alignment

This policy applies the COPE and ICMJE principles on authorship transparency and institutional accountability. Neither body currently issues affiliation-specific guidance; JOTMI adopts the criteria set out here to close that gap and to prevent the misuse of affiliation data. The policy is to be interpreted together with the JOTMI Correction, Retraction, and Post-Publication Amendment Policy, the Authorship, Contribution and Credit (CRediT) Policy, and the Publication Integrity Protocol and Extended Retraction Policy.

10. Review of this policy

JOTMI reviews this policy periodically and upon the publication of materially revised guidance by COPE or ICMJE. Questions may be addressed to the Editor at [email protected].