Authorship Criteria
Authorship Criteria & Contributions
- Eligibility for Authorship
Authorship should be restricted to those who have made a substantial contribution to the work and accept accountability for its contents. Following the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, all listed authors must meet all four of the following criteria:
a) Significant contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data in the work;
b) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
c) Final approval of the version to be published;
d) Agreement to be responsible for all aspects of the work so that questions about the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
2. Non-Author Contributors & Acknowledgments
Therefore, those individuals contributing to the manuscript but not meeting all four of the above criteria should not be identified as authors. Rather, they should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section (as they may provide research funding, administrative assistance, technical assistance, language editing, or general supervision) with their written permission.
- Author Roles (CRediT Taxonomy)
In order for transparency to be assured, authors can specify their roles in the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) before submitting. Roles include Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
- Ghost, Guest, and Gift Authorship
The journal strictly bans ghost, guest, and gift authorship:
a) Gift/Honorary Authorship: including people who made no significant contribution.
b) Ghost Authorship: ignoring people who made substantial intellectual contributions.
c) AI assistance: AI tools (ChatGPT or Large Language Models) do not meet authorship criteria as they cannot take responsibility for the paper's integrity. Their use must be explicitly disclosed in the Methods or Acknowledgments section.
