The inaccurate representation of an author’s publishing name, and impact on reference accuracy

Authors with compound family names face a constant set of challenges in having their names accurately represented in the scientific literature. In my personal case (Teixeira da Silva, JA), an as-yet-unquantified body of literature miscites me (and thus my work) as “da Silva, JAT”, “Silva, JA”, or other inaccurate forms. This paper provides evidence of the modification and thus misrepresentation of my professional publishing name in proofs of select papers eventually published in Springer Nature journals, despite the accuracy of metadata at the submission and acceptance stages. This record may also be helpful for other scientists with non-standard or compound family names, who may have had a similar experience. Springer Nature currently outsources the development of its proofs to Straive. Possible reasons as to why this misrepresentation might be occurring, and some solutions, are proposed. The misrepresentation of an author’s professional publishing name may cause them reputational damage by distorting their publishing record, so publishers need to be aware of this issue and take appropriate measures to avoid such errors, correcting them whenever they are discovered and reported.