Roles and responsibilities of authors and contributors
Who is an author?
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has developed four criteria for authorship to reduce ambiguity regarding the definition of the roles of authors and contributors. The criteria are as follows:
- Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the article, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.
- Participation in the drafting of the research study or the critical revision of its intellectual content.
- Involvement in the approval of the final version to be published.
- Ability to take responsibility for all aspects of the article to ensure that issues related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the study are appropriately investigated and resolved.
In addition to being partially responsible for the study, an author must be able to identify that their co-authors are also authors. Authors should have confidence in the integrity of their co-authors' contributions.
Any person designated as an author must meet all four criteria that define authorship, and those who meet the criteria should be identified as authors. Individuals who do not meet the criteria should be acknowledged in the acknowledgments section. These criteria aim to reserve authorship status for those who deserve to be credited as authors and assume responsibility for the study.
The individuals conducting the study are responsible for identifying who meets these criteria, ideally during the planning phase, making appropriate modifications as the study progresses. It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal to which the study is submitted, to determine that all individuals listed as authors meet the four criteria. If a request is made to add or remove an author after the manuscript has been submitted or published, the journal's editors will request an explanation and require all authors mentioned, including the one to be removed or added, to sign a statement in accordance with the requested change. For any additional guidance on this matter, it is important to note that AJRPT follows the guidelines provided by COPE.
The contributions made by each author in the research process should be systematically identified using the CRediT taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy).
On the title page of the manuscript (download the title page template here), authorship roles should be identified in the following order, with each author assigned to their respective role and omitting roles that are not applicable to their research:
Conceptualization: xxxxxx
Data curation: xxxxxx
Formal analysis: xxxxxx
Funding acquisition: xxxxxx
Investigation: xxxxxx
Methodology: xxxxxx
Project administration: xxxxxx
Resources: xxxxxx
Software: xxxxxx
Supervision: xxxxxx
Validation: xxxxxx
Visualization: xxxxxx
Writing - original draft: xxxxxx
Writing - review and editing: xxxxxx
Each role is defined as follows:
Conceptualization: Ideas; formulation or evolution of the research objectives and general goals.
Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), clean up data, and maintain research data (including software code, when necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and subsequent reuse.
Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Funding acquisition: Acquisition of financial support for the project leading to this publication.
Investigation: Conducting research and investigation process, specifically performing experiments or collecting data/evidence.
Methodology: Development or design of the methodology; creation of models.
Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for planning and executing research activity.
Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computer resources, or other analysis tools.
Software: Programming, software development; design of computer programs; implementation of computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Supervision: Supervision and leadership responsibility in planning and executing research activities, including external mentoring of the core team.
Validation: Verification, either as part of the activity or separately, of the general replicability/reproducibility of the research results/experiments and other research products.
Visualization: Preparation, creation, or presentation of the published study, specifically the visualization/presentation of data.
Writing - original draft: Preparation, creation, or presentation of the published study, specifically the initial drafting (including substantive translation).
Writing - review and editing: Preparation, creation, or presentation of the published study by the original research group members, specifically critical review, commentary, or revision - including pre- or post-publication stages.
Additionally, on the main page, any editorial contribution made by external organizations, individuals, funding bodies, or individuals employed by funding sources should also be acknowledged.
The corresponding author is the person who assumes responsibility for communication with the journal's editorial office during manuscript submission, peer review, and the editorial process. They are generally responsible for ensuring that all administrative requirements with the journal and details regarding authorship, ethical committee approval, clinical trial registration, and declaration of conflicts of interest are completed correctly, although these functions may be delegated to one or more co-authors. Throughout the submission and peer review process, the corresponding author should be available to respond to queries in a timely manner and, after publication, to address criticisms of the study and cooperate with anycorrections or retractions if necessary.
Non-author contributors
Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship but have made significant contributions to the research or the manuscript should be acknowledged in the acknowledgments section. This may include individuals who provided technical assistance, guidance, or valuable discussions but did not meet the criteria for authorship.
Examples of activities that, by themselves (without other contributions), do not qualify a contributor as an author include: funding acquisition, general supervision of a research group, administrative support, assistance during writing, technical editing, translation, or proofreading. These contributions can be specified (for example, as scientific advisors, critical reviewers of the study proposal, data collection, providing participants, or attending to patients included in the study, participating in the writing or technical editing of the article).
Unclear authorship criteria become evident in various circumstances and at different stages of the evaluation process and can lead to the suspension of the review process or even rejection of the article. Among the main problems identified, the following can be listed:
- Authors who request changes in the order of appearance without the consent of the other authors.
- Authors who include co-authors without notifying them or seeking their consent.
- Authors who discover that their name was included in an article once it has already been published, without having given their consent.
- Authors who discover that their name was not included in the publication and was removed by the corresponding author without seeking their consent.
- Ghost authors: They can be nonexistent individuals created to be listed as authors or individuals who meet the authorship criteria but are not listed as authors.
- Ghost writers: Individuals who have written the study but are not listed as authors. If a professional writer has participated in the article, whether they meet the criteria for authorship depends on the authorship criteria applied.
- Guest author: Authors who lend their name without having participated in the research.
