How do I handle a colleague's gender change when citing their paper? We are currently working on a conference paper where we plan to cite and discuss a paper as a related work. It was written by a colleague at the same university who has kindly offered to help us understand its specifics. 

After publishing said paper, the colleague has changed name and gender. For example, suppose that the paper is authored by George Smith and she now uses the name Mary Smith (not the real names). The problem is that she insists that her new name/gender is used everywhere, including our citation of her publication. She explicitly asked us to change the citation from G. Smith to M. Smith.

I’m not sure how to handle this. The publisher still lists George as name as do most citation data bases. Our scientific handbook demand that external sources should be cited as precisely as possible and should not be modified. (I asked about this specific case and got back a multi-page document that stresses the importance of respecting gender identity [no problem for me] but the document does not address this issue.) On the other hand, the paper has a distinct title, journal name, volume, number, pages and a DOI so everybody should be able to find it, even if one author is listed as M. Smith instead of G. Smith.

Do you have any advice on how to handle this situation? Would a change from G. Smith to M. Smith be acceptable/reasonable?
Is it an option to ask M Smith if she would be ok if the first citation were to read as the following? 


  Smith, M. (published G.) 2014, recent advances in foo, international journal of foo sciences 12:56, 427-865


This would eliminate the only reason I can think of for misgendering the person, namely that readers might be unsure whether they are looking up the correct source. This would be a weak reason, though, since we have DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) now.

Edited on second thought: What is the worst thing that could happen if you use the new name? Someone might find it more difficult to look up the paper; that's a minor inconvenience. Compare this to the frustration, if not anger and distress, that it would cause M. Smith to be referred to in cold print by a name that doesn't reflect her identity and that she is struggling to leave behind.