Authorship Criteria
Authorship confers credit and carries responsibility and accountability for the published work. JACOBS follows the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the guidance of COPE on authorship.
Who Qualifies as an Author
Each person listed as an author must meet all four of the following criteria:
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
- Drafting the manuscript 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 work, ensuring that questions about the accuracy or integrity of any part are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Contributors who do not meet all four criteria, such as those who only collected data, provided technical help, supplied participants, gave general supervision, or offered language editing, must be listed in the Acknowledgments with their permission.
Unacceptable Authorship Practices
- Guest or honorary authorship: listing a person who did not contribute substantially, for example because of seniority or position.
- Ghost authorship: omitting a person who made a substantial contribution, including professional writers.
- Purchased authorship: buying or selling an authorship position, including through paper mills.
- AI authorship: listing an artificial intelligence tool as an author (see AI Use Policy).
Author Contributions (CRediT)
Authors must describe each person's contribution using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) in the declarations.
| Role | Description |
|---|---|
| Conceptualization | Formulating the ideas, research goals, and aims. |
| Methodology | Designing the methods, models, or instruments. |
| Software | Programming, developing software, or implementing code and algorithms. |
| Validation | Verifying the replicability and reproducibility of results. |
| Formal analysis | Applying statistical, computational, or qualitative analytic techniques. |
| Investigation | Conducting the research, collecting data, or delivering the intervention. |
| Resources | Providing participants, materials, instruments, or facilities. |
| Data curation | Managing, cleaning, annotating, and maintaining research data. |
| Writing – original draft | Preparing the first draft of the manuscript. |
| Writing – review and editing | Critically reviewing, commenting on, and revising the manuscript. |
| Visualization | Preparing figures and data presentation. |
| Supervision | Overseeing and mentoring the planning and execution of the research. |
| Project administration | Managing and coordinating the research activity. |
| Funding acquisition | Obtaining the financial support for the project. |
Author 1: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft. Author 2: Formal analysis, Data curation, Visualization, Writing – review and editing. Author 3: Supervision, Validation, Writing – review and editing. All authors approved the final manuscript.
Corresponding Author
The corresponding author communicates with the journal on behalf of all authors throughout submission, review, and publication. The corresponding author ensures that all co-authors have approved the submission and every revision, that the author list and declarations are accurate, and that the journal's requests are answered on time. An ORCID iD is required for the corresponding author and strongly encouraged for all co-authors.
Affiliations
List the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved, the current affiliation may be added as a note. Write affiliations in full: department, institution, city, and country.
Changes to Authorship
- The author list and order should be final at submission.
- Any addition, removal, or reordering of authors before acceptance requires a written request to the editor stating the reason, signed by all authors, including those being added or removed.
- After acceptance, changes are considered only in exceptional circumstances. After publication, changes are made only through a formal correction.
- The journal does not adjudicate authorship disputes. Such disputes are referred to the authors' institutions in accordance with COPE guidance, and the manuscript is put on hold until they are resolved.
