When the Death of a Colleague Meets Academic Publishing: A Call for Compassion

What would you do if someone approached you to sign a publishing form on your partner's behalf within mere weeks of their death? After my trusted, brilliant coworker died, I grappled daily between grieving her loss and driving productivity on her assigned projects. Because, after all, the world keeps spinning, research progresses, and manuscripts have to be published. In attempting to honor her memory through post-mortem authorship on publications, I was faced with a unique quandary of how to procure a signature on legal publishing forms, which is often requested during the publication process. Little guidance is available for corresponding authors on this issue, so I call on academic publishers to create post-mortem authorship policies that prioritize compassion, dignity, and rationality in the wake of grief.