Posthumous authorship or acknowledgement Suppose I am working on a book that is a broad expansion of a survey article I wrote with a collaborator, Dr. Y, who passed away recently.
I sent Y extremely early drafts of some chapters and invited Y to be a coauthor.
Y gave a lot suggestions in the structure, content, and style of the book, yet Y remained vague about coauthorship (probably because he had doubts if he will live long enough). Y never said yes or no.
Y never participated in the actual writing.
But Y's suggestions became the high level blueprint that guided the development of the book.
This draft is only about 60% done, but I'm wondering: in this case, should Y be a coauthor?
There may be laws that govern this, though laws vary from place to place. Normally he would have to give permission and that &quot;right&quot; may legally have passed to his heirs. You would do well to contact someone responsible for his estate and take up the question with them.
But since he never gave permission, you don't have permission, yet, to include him. You have an obligation to acknowledge his contribution and probably cite some of the specifics as well, even though they haven't been published.
Dedicating the book to his memory would be a nice touch also.