Authorship & Contributorship Policy

Authorship carries credit and responsibility. This policy follows the principles of the ICMJE recommendations and the COPE guidance on authorship.

Who is an author

An author must have made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the collection, analysis or interpretation of data; have drafted the work or revised it critically for important content; have approved the final version; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work. All persons who meet these criteria must be listed as authors. Contributors who do not meet them, for example for technical help, language editing or general supervision, are named in the Acknowledgements with their consent.

Author contributions statement

Every article contains an Author contributions section that uses the CRediT roles (conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing – original draft, writing – review & editing).

Corresponding author

One author is the corresponding author. This person submits the manuscript, answers editors and reviewers on behalf of all authors, confirms that all authors have approved the submission, and is responsible for the correctness of the author list and affiliations. ORCID iDs are required for all authors.

Not acceptable

• Gift or honorary authorship (naming someone who did not contribute), and ghost authorship (omitting someone who did).
• Listing an AI tool as an author. AI tools cannot take responsibility for a work (see the AI Use Policy).
• Adding authors only to improve the chances of acceptance.

Changes to the author list

Requests to add, remove or reorder authors before acceptance must be sent to the editorial office by e-mail, with a short reason and the written agreement of all authors, including the author who is added or removed. After publication the author list can be changed only by a published correction, and only with the agreement of all authors.

Disputes

Authorship disputes between authors should first be solved by the authors or their institution. The journal may suspend a manuscript until the dispute is resolved and handles cases according to the Publication Ethics & Malpractice policy.