Who should be listed as an author and who should sign the publication form (authorship criteria)?

ICMJE Criteria

Authors publishing in JMIR Publications journals must meet the criteria for authorship laid out in the definition of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), which stipulates that authorship should be based on four criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work 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.

Verification of Authorship Criteria

Authors ultimately confirm that they meet authorship criteria by signing the JMIR Publications License to Publish form, which is sent to all authors via Dropbox Sign upon acceptance of a manuscript. 

See: JMIR Publications License to Publish (Publishing Agreement) Form

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors but should be acknowledged in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are the acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. 

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work they have done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.

It is the responsibility of the authors to resolve authorship disagreements or disputes, then inform JMIR Publications staff regarding adjustments that are agreed upon by all authors, if any adjustments are indicated. JMIR Publications adheres to COPE guidance on authorship changes that may result from authors resolving such disagreements amongst themselves.

Special rules are applied if an author is incapacitated or deceased (see: Do all authors need to sign the Publication Form?).

Changing Listed Authors After Submission

For more information, see:

How to change (add/drop) authors after/during peer-review but before publication

JMIR Publications policy on authorship changes post-publication

Group Authorship and Collaborators

For more information, see: 

What is a group author (collaborative author) and does it need an ORCID? 

What are "collaborators" and where should they be listed?)

Ghost, Guest or Honorary Authorship

JMIR Publications does not permit ghost, guest, or honorary authorship and adheres to COPE guidance on such matters. 

Ghost authorship occurs when an individual has made author-level contributions to the paper but is not included in the author list. 

Guest or honorary authorship occurs when someone who has not met all authorship criteria is listed as an author. 

Individuals who have participated in the generation of the research paper but who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section with a brief description of the nature of their contribution.

External Links:

NLM Technical Bulletin on "Study Collaborators"

ICMJE Authorship Criteria

See also 

• Where can I find the publication forms for authors and where do I submit them?
• What is a group author (collaborative author) and does it need an ORCID?