Should I use an out-of-order version of my name for academic publications?
I do know someone who signs their email as &quot;John Aardvark S.,&quot; and authors their papers as &quot;John Aardvark.&quot; In their case, the &quot;S.&quot; is a married name, so I would guess they added it after their first publication (but don't know for sure).
Putting them out of order makes me think that your name would constantly be getting rearranged (people thinking you filled out your name wrong, especially if your middle name is typically a first name, and your last name is typically a last name). And think of nametag confusion! In other words, being known as &quot;Dr. John Smith&quot; but publishing as &quot;Dr. John Aardvark&quot; isn't a common fix, so people won't know how to interpret it.
Another option would be to make &quot;Aardvark Smith&quot; your last name (hyphenated or not), I definitely know people who go by only one name of a double-barreled name. Or to just accept that sometimes your name will be abbreviated to &quot;JA Smith.&quot; I suppose it depends on the usual citation format in your field. Most of time time, my field uses initials only when the author uses them, so that wouldn't be a big deal to me.