Authorship and Contributorship

The following policies apply to JCM journal, unless otherwise noted.

Everyone listed as an author should meet our criteria for authorship. Everyone who meets our criteria for authorship must be listed as an author.

We expect that all authors will take public responsibility for the content of the manuscript submitted to JMS. The contributions of all authors must be described.

All authors will be contacted by email at submission to ensure that they are aware of and approve the submission of the manuscript, its content, and its authorship. JMS journal require that all co-authors confirm their assent to publication by email. 

Qualifying for Authorship

Authorship criteria is based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals.

The ICMJE lists four conditions for authorship credit. Authors must meet all four conditions in order to be listed.

• Substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, and
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content, and
• Final approval of the version to be published, and
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Group Authorship

The ICMJE recommends that group authorship adhere to the following guidelines:

When a large, multicenter group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship/contributorship defined above, and editors will ask these individuals to complete journal-specific author and conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship.

When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should clearly indicate the preferred citation in the manuscript title page and identify all individual authors as well as the group name. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments.

Please be aware that as of October 2016, the National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) policy has changed and PubMed will only index individuals and the names of consortia or group authors listed in the author byline itself. Individual consortium/group author members listed in the author byline must qualify for authorship according to our criteria.

Author Contributions

The contributions of all authors must be described. JMS has adopted the credit taxonomy to describe each author’s individual contributions to the work. The submitting author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors at submission. We expect that all authors will have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of this time. Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect contributions to the work. 

Contributor Role	Role Definition
Conceptualization	Ideas; creation or evolution of broad research goals and objectives.
Data Curation	Management actions to annotate (create metadata), scrub data, and maintain research data (including software code, if required for data interpretation) for initial use and eventual reuse.
Formal Analysis	Analysis or synthesis of study data using statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques.
Funding Acquisition	Obtaining financial funding for the effort that resulted in this publication.
Investigation	Conducting a study and inquiry procedure, specifically executing tests or gathering data/evidence
Methodology	Development or design of methodology; creation of models
Project Administration	Management and coordination responsibilities for the planning and execution of research activities.
Resources	Supply of research materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Software	Programming and software development include the creation of computer programmes, the implementation of computer code and supporting algorithms, and the testing of existing code components.
Supervision	Oversight and leadership responsibilities for the planning and execution of research activities, including mentorship outside of the core team.
Validation	Verification of overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs, whether as part of the activity or separately.
Visualization	Preparation, development, and/or presentation of published work, focusing on visualization/data presentation
Writing – Original Draft Preparation	Creating and/or presenting the published work, particularly composing the first draught (including substantive translation).
Writing – Review & Editing	Preparation, preparation, and/or presentation of the published work by members of the original research group, including critical review, discussion, or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

Acknowledgments

Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. It is expected that those being acknowledged have given their permission to be named.

Corresponding Author Responsibilities

The corresponding author takes responsibility for and speaks on behalf of all authors.  

Pre-publication:

• Ensure that the manuscript is in full adherence with all http://jmseleyon.com/index.php/jms/index
• Ensure that all authors have access to the final version of the manuscript that is submitted to the journal, and agree to the author list and author contributions. 
• Ensure that all authors have seen the final draft of the manuscript before it is published.
• Provide to the journal written confirmation that all authors consent to any requested changes in the manuscript’s authorship.  

Post-publication:

• Continue to be the point of contact for queries about the published paper.
• Inform all co-authors of any matters arising and ensure such matters are dealt with promptly. 

Authorship Changes

JMS journals follow the COPE guidelines for changes in authorship.

Changing the author list after submission requires agreement from all authors. This includes additions, deletions, and changes in ordering. Requests must come from the corresponding author along with an explanation for the change. If the change is deemed to be appropriate, the corresponding author must receive and provide to JMS the consent to the change from all the authors, including any being added, deleted, or reordered. 

Editor and Reviewer Requirements

Editors should be aware of the author list and author affiliations when they invite reviewers to review a manuscript in order to reduce the likelihood of inviting individuals with potentially competing interests that would disqualify them from participating in the peer review process.

Editors and reviewers should notify the journal if they have any concerns regarding the author list or if they discover any potentially competing interests that need to be declared or that need them to recuse themselves from the process.