Authorship Criteria

Authorship Criteria

Authors must meet all of the following conditions:

• a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the collection, analysis, or interpretation of data;
• drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
• approval of the final version to be published; and
• agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Honorary, ghost, and gift authorship are not accepted. Everyone who contributed but does not meet these criteria is named in the acknowledgements. The list and order of authors must be settled at submission. Changes to the author list after acceptance are not allowed without a written explanation signed by all authors and approved by the Editor in Chief; adding authors after acceptance without a clear explanation is not permitted.

Each published article contains an Author Contribution Statement that describes the contribution of each author. Author names and affiliations must be valid and verifiable; the use of fictitious identities or the use of a person's identity without consent leads to rejection or retraction (see the Publication Ethics).