Authorship
To warrant that anyone who made a modest or substantial (intellectual or supportive) contribution to the realization of the manuscript receives official recognition, we ask you to complete an authorship record form and a statement of individual contributions. In this way, we also ensure that all contributors designated as authors are familiar enough with the submitted manuscript to be subjected to accountability and to bear full responsibility for its content.
Our definition of authorship is based on the criteria formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) which read as follows:
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work, AND
- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content, AND
- Final approval of the version to be published, AND
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as author.
Policing authorship is beyond the responsibility of an editor: it is the responsibility of the authors, not the editors, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria.
Acknowledgement
All individuals that contributed sufficiently to the conception, design, analysis or interpretation of the article but who do not comply with the criteria of authorship should not be listed as author, but should be acknowledged (for instance anyone who was involved in language or technical editing, funding, drafting or revising the document, general supervision, administrative support, writing assistance, proofreading) in the acknowledgement section.