AAIDD Policy on Journal Article Author Incapacity or Death

If a paper is submitted when an author is incapacitated or deceased, the submission cover letter should note the incapacity or death and provide an explanation as to why that individual is included as an author.

If an author becomes incapacitated or dies during the peer review or the publication process, provided that relevant declarations and guarantees were given to the journal by the author, their incapacity or death alone shall not invalidate authorship attribution.

In either case,

(a) A statement must be provided from the corresponding author attesting that to the best of their knowledge, the deceased/incapacitated individual met the definition of authorship, and that all the other authors agree.

(b) The responsibilities for the response to peer review process must be assigned to one of the co-authors, and the responsibilities for post publication content (intellectual and factual) must be assigned to one of the co-authors,  the deceased author’s institution, or in the absence of a response by the institution, the publisher, who shall have the right to then correct the literature as an erratum, expression of concern, or retraction.

(c) An author note shall acknowledge/address the circumstance surrounding the incapacity or death of an author and clearly specifies the corresponding author or entity to direct any post-publication queries.