Authorship and Contributionship
Authorship provides credit for an individual’s contributions to a study and carries accountability. According to the guidelines for authorship established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), ‘All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed.’
An author should meet following criteria
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the research work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
- Drafting the research work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
- Final approval of the version to be published.
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the research 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 for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. It is important to list everyone who made a substantial effort (study conception, design, data acquisition, analysis, drafting revising, approval of final version, including students or laboratory technicians) in completing the research paper, to avoid Ghost Publication.
Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal to which the work is submitted, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria; it is not the role of journal editors to determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship or to arbitrate authorship conflicts.
The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.
When two or three authors have written a research paper, all should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript.
Honorary authorship
Do not include your senior member, supervisor or any other person, if he or she has not have made substantial contribution to your research paper and you include the name of an author along with you. It will be considered as Gift authorship or Honorary authorship.
The author is directed not to violate the above instructions and author is also advised to check COPE guidelines to avoid anything which is considered unethical in COPE guidelines. If we found any violation of COPE guidelines is done by author(s), the action will be taken according to COPE guidelines on case to case basis.
