Authorship, Contributions and Authorship Changes
Authorship requires fulfillment of all four criteria established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE):
- Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.
- Participation in drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content.
- Approval of the final version to be published.
- Accountability for the integrity and accuracy of the work.
Individuals who contributed to the work but do not meet all authorship criteria should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section, with their permission.
The order of authors will be agreed upon by the authors themselves. The journal does not automatically attribute greater contribution to the first, last, or intermediate positions.
All manuscripts must include a contributor statement using the CRediT taxonomy. This statement describes the roles performed by each author but does not replace the ICMJE authorship criteria.
A corresponding author must be designated to communicate with the journal and confirm that all authors approved the submission, revisions, authorship order, contributor statement, and final version.
Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors must be submitted before acceptance, with justification and written agreement from all individuals involved. Changes after acceptance will be considered only in exceptional circumstances; changes after publication may require a formal correction.
Artificial intelligence tools do not meet authorship criteria and may not be listed as authors.
