The IJSSE follows the authorship criteria recommended by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). All individuals listed as authors must meet the established criteria, and all individuals who meet the criteria must be listed.
- Authorship criteria
To qualify as an author, an individual must meet all four of the following criteria:
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
- Drafting the 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 work, ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Contributors who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgement section but should not be listed as authors.
- Corresponding author
The corresponding author assumes primary responsibility for the manuscript throughout the submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author is the sole contact for the editorial process and is responsible for communicating with co-authors regarding progress, revisions, and final approval of proofs.
- Author order
The order of authors must be agreed upon by all co-authors before submission. The IJSSE will not intervene in disputes regarding author order. Any changes to the author list after submission must be approved by all co-authors and communicated to the editorial office in writing.
- Changes to authorship
Any request to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be made in writing to the Editor-in-Chief and must include:
- The reason for the change.
- Written confirmation from all co-authors (including the author being added or removed) agreeing to the modification.
The IJSSE reserves the right to request justification for any authorship changes and may contact all listed authors for verification.
- Prohibited practices
Ghost authorship: Individuals who have made substantial contributions to the work but are not listed as authors. This practice is considered unethical.
Gift/Honorary authorship: Includes individuals as authors who have not made substantial contributions to the work. This practice is prohibited.
AI authorship: Artificial intelligence tools and large language models cannot be listed as authors or co-authors. AI tools do not meet the criteria of accountability and consent required for authorship.
- CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy)
The IJSSE encourages (but does not require) authors to use the CRediT taxonomy to describe each author’s specific contribution to the work. CRediT roles include Conceptualisation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing - Original Draft, Writing - Review and Editing, Visualisation, Supervision, Project Administration, and Funding Acquisition.