When a paper lists two or more people as corresponding author, it is not a typo or an editorial oversight — it is a deliberate designation, permitted by many (not all) journals, meant to signal that responsibility for the work’s post-publication communication is genuinely shared rather than resting on one individual. This page covers the mechanics specific to that shared arrangement: which publishers explicitly permit it, how it is denoted in the byline, why authors request it, and what each co-corresponding author is actually expected to do once the paper is out. For the underlying duties any corresponding author holds — ICMJE’s four-criteria baseline, submission and peer-review responsibilities, post-publication obligations — see Corresponding Author Responsibilities: What ICMJE Actually Requires. For how the corresponding-author role compares to first authorship generally, see Corresponding Author vs. First Author.
What “co-corresponding author” means
Co-corresponding authorship is the practice of designating two or more authors as jointly responsible for correspondence on a published work, each named as a corresponding author in the byline or a footnote, rather than one person holding the role alone. CASRAI’s dictionary entry for the co-corresponding author convention covers the short operational definition; this guide goes into the mechanics that definition doesn’t have room for — specific publisher policies, footnote conventions, and the practical trade-offs of using it.
Does ICMJE take a position on shared corresponding authorship?
No, not directly. The ICMJE Recommendations define what a corresponding author does — taking “primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process” — but the recommendations are written around a single corresponding author and do not explicitly address whether that responsibility can be split between two or more people. ICMJE does not prohibit co-corresponding authorship, but it also does not endorse or standardize it; whether a given journal allows it, and how many co-corresponding authors it will accept, is a matter of individual publisher policy, not an ICMJE requirement. Treat any claim that “ICMJE requires” or “ICMJE bans” co-corresponding authorship as incorrect — the standard is simply silent on this specific point.
Which journals actually permit and define it
There is no universal cross-publisher standard for co-corresponding authorship, and coverage is uneven: some journals explicitly describe and cap it, some allow it without much explanation, and some effectively restrict correspondence to a single named individual. A few concrete, verifiable examples:
- PLOS journals state it explicitly in their submission guidelines: “Only one corresponding author can be designated in the submission system, but this does not restrict the number of corresponding authors that may be listed on the article in the event of publication.” In other words, the online submission form is built around one primary contact, but the published paper can list more than one corresponding author on the title page and byline.
- Baishideng Publishing Group (BPG) journals publish a policy explicitly permitting co-first authors and co-corresponding authors, with requests handled case by case and typically capped at a small number of co-corresponding authors per paper, rather than left open-ended.
- Many other large publishers (Nature Portfolio and Cell Press journals among them) permit more than one corresponding author to be listed in practice, but do not publish a dedicated policy page spelling out a footnote convention or a hard numeric cap the way PLOS and BPG do — the arrangement is typically negotiated with the handling editor at submission or revision rather than governed by a standalone written rule.
The practical takeaway: don’t assume a journal supports co-corresponding authorship just because a paper you’ve seen in that journal has it, and don’t assume a journal forbids it just because its guidelines don’t mention it by name. Check the specific journal’s current author guidelines, or ask the handling editor directly, before finalizing a submission that relies on the arrangement — and do it early, since some journals only accommodate the request during initial submission, not after acceptance.
How it’s denoted in the byline
Where co-corresponding authorship is permitted, it is almost always shown the same way co-first authorship is: a shared symbol (commonly an asterisk, dagger, or a numbered footnote marker) placed next to each co-corresponding author’s name, paired with a footnote at the bottom of the author list or on the title page stating something to the effect of “These authors jointly supervised this work” or “These authors contributed equally as corresponding authors” or simply “Co-corresponding author.” The exact wording and symbol are set by the journal’s house style, not by a cross-publisher standard, so authors should follow the specific journal’s author instructions (or the example already published in a recent issue) rather than assuming one convention applies everywhere. Email addresses for every co-corresponding author are typically listed alongside the footnote, since the point of the designation is that any of them can be legitimately contacted about the work.
Why authors request it
Co-corresponding authorship is usually requested for one of a few recurring reasons, not granted as a courtesy or a symmetry gesture on its own:
- Cross-institutional collaborations, where two labs at different institutions each contributed leadership to the project and each wants (or needs, for internal reporting purposes) a named point of contact.
- Co-equal senior leadership, for example a senior PI and a lead postdoc or staff scientist who jointly directed the work and will jointly field questions about it afterward.
- Symmetry with co-first authorship: when a paper already lists co-first authors to reflect genuinely equal contribution at the front of the byline, some teams request co-corresponding status at the back of the byline for the same reason — to avoid one senior author appearing to “own” a collaboration that was actually jointly led.
- Career-credit reasons for early-career researchers: corresponding authorship (especially last-author-adjacent corresponding authorship) is read by many hiring, tenure, and grant-review committees as a signal of research leadership. A postdoc or early-career PI who led substantial parts of a collaborative project may specifically request co-corresponding status so that leadership signal appears on their CV, not only their more senior collaborator’s.
None of these reasons make co-corresponding status a formality. CASRAI’s dictionary entry for the convention is explicit that the designation “should not be granted as a courtesy” — it carries real, ongoing obligations (below), and a journal or institution that later needs to reach a corresponding author expects each person given that title to actually be reachable and responsible.
What each co-corresponding author is expected to do
Being one of several co-corresponding authors does not mean a lighter version of the role, split evenly by workload. In practice, each co-corresponding author is expected to be independently capable of handling:
- Post-publication data and materials requests from other researchers, including for a data-availability statement that promises the authors will provide data on reasonable request.
- Corrections and retractions: if an error is identified after publication, journals typically expect any corresponding author to respond to the initial query, even if the underlying issue is later resolved collectively by all authors per journal and COPE process.
- Editorial and reviewer correspondence during any post-publication process (a published correction, a reader comment, a formal post-publication peer review) that reopens the paper for discussion.
- Media and public inquiries about the work, where relevant, since press offices and journalists typically go to whichever name is listed as corresponding.
Some teams informally divide these duties by topic or by which co-corresponding author is easiest to reach at a given time, but that division is a private arrangement between the authors — from the journal’s and the reader’s perspective, every name listed as corresponding author carries the full obligation, not a fractional share of it.
Caveats and limitations
- Not every journal supports it. Some publishers’ submission systems are built for exactly one corresponding-author record, and either won’t accommodate a second name in the metadata at all or will only allow it as a manually-added footnote on the manuscript file rather than a structured field — ask before assuming.
- Indexing services generally can’t represent “shared” status structurally. Databases such as PubMed record whatever is in the byline and footnotes, but their structured author metadata is not designed to flag “these two authors jointly hold corresponding-author status” as a distinct, queryable attribute the way it flags author order. A reader relying only on a database record, rather than the actual PDF or HTML byline and footnotes, may not see the co-corresponding designation at all.
- Accountability can become ambiguous in practice, even when it isn’t supposed to be. If neither co-corresponding author follows up on a data request or a correction because each assumes the other will handle it, the arrangement has failed at the one thing it exists to guarantee. Naming multiple corresponding authors is not a substitute for the authors agreeing, privately, on who actually monitors the correspondence inbox and who responds to what.
- It is not a CRediT role. Corresponding-author status, shared or not, sits outside the 14 CRediT contributor roles entirely — it is an administrative/communication designation, not a statement about what type of scientific contribution someone made. See How Many CRediT Roles Can One Author Hold, and Can a Role Be Shared? for the separate question of shared CRediT roles.
Frequently asked questions
Can more than two authors be co-corresponding?
Some journals allow it, but many that permit co-corresponding authorship at all still cap the number (commonly at two, sometimes more on a case-by-case basis). There is no universal limit set by ICMJE or any other cross-publisher standard — check the specific journal’s current guidelines.
Does co-corresponding authorship carry the same career credit as co-first authorship?
It’s read as a credit signal by many hiring, tenure, and grant-review committees, particularly as evidence of research leadership, but unlike co-first authorship there’s no equivalent standardized convention (like CRediT’s “contributed equally” language) for asserting it formally in a CV or biosketch beyond noting the designation next to the citation. Treat it as a real signal, not an automatic equivalent to a fully independent corresponding-author-only publication.
Who does a journal actually email if there are multiple corresponding authors?
Typically all of them, or whichever address was used at initial submission, depending on the journal’s system. This is exactly the ambiguity that makes an internal agreement about who monitors correspondence important — see Caveats above.
Can a co-corresponding author be added after a paper is accepted?
Usually not without an editor’s explicit approval, since any change to author list or roles after acceptance is treated as an authorship change and typically requires justification and, depending on the journal, sign-off from all existing authors — the same scrutiny any post-acceptance authorship change receives.
Does PubMed or Google Scholar show that authors are “co-corresponding”?
Not reliably as a distinct, queryable field. What shows depends on whether the indexing service captured the byline symbol and footnote text from the original article; the underlying journal record (PDF or publisher HTML page) is the authoritative source for confirming co-corresponding status, not a database’s structured author list.
For the base role this page builds on, see Corresponding Author Responsibilities: What ICMJE Actually Requires and Corresponding Author vs. First Author. For the related question of dividing CRediT contribution roles among co-authors, see How Many CRediT Roles Can One Author Hold, and Can a Role Be Shared?. For what happens when authorship itself, rather than just the corresponding-author designation, is disputed, see COPE’s Flowchart for Suspected Ghost, Guest, or Gift Authorship.
