Let R be a commutative ring with unity and SAn(R) be the group of volume-preserving automorphisms of the polynomial R-algebra R[n].Given a proper ideal α of R,we address in this paper the question of whether the canonical group homomorphism SAn(R) → SAn(R/α) is surjective.As an application,we retrieve and generalize,in a unified way,several known results on residual coordinates in polynomial rings.