A. Defining the Role of Authors 

II. ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF AUTHORS,

CONTRIBUTORS, REVIEWERS, EDITORS, PUBLISHERS,

AND OWNERS

A. Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors

1. Why Authorship Matters

为什么署名重要？

署名涉及到信用，有重要的学术，社会，财政意义。署名也揭示了出版工作的责任和责任性。以下的推荐说明是为了确保作出实质性智力的贡献者有署名权并对出版物承担责任。

Authorship confers credit and has important academic, social, and financial implications. Authorship also implies responsibility and accountability for published work. The following recommendations are intended to ensure that contributors who have made substantive intellectual contributions to a paper are given credit as authors, but also that contributors credited as authors understand their role in taking responsibility and being accountable for what is published.

Because authorship does not communicate what contributions qualified an individual to be an author, some journals now request and publish information about the contributions of each person named as having participated in a submitted study, at least for original research. Editors are strongly encouraged to develop and implement a con- tributorship policy. Such policies remove much of the am-biguity surrounding contributions, but leave unresolved the question of the quantity and quality of contribution that qualify an individual for authorship. The ICMJE has thus developed criteria for authorship that can be used by all journals, including those that distinguish authors from other contributors.

2. Who Is an Author?

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on

the following 4 criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or de-

sign of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpre-

tation of data for the work; AND

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for im-

portant intellectual content; AND

3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4. 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 investi-

gated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the

work he or she has 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.

All those designated as authors should meet all four

criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria

should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all

four criteria should be acknowledged—see Section II.A.3

below. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the

status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can

take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not in-

tended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from

authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by de-

nying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3.

Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion

should have the opportunity to participate in the review,

drafting, and final approval of the manuscript.

The individuals who conduct the work are responsible

for identifying who meets these criteria and ideally should

do so when planning the work, making modifications as

appropriate as the work progresses. We encourage collabo-

ration and co-authorship with colleagues in the locations

where the research is conducted. It is the collective respon-

sibility of the authors, not the journal to which the work is

submitted, to determine that all people named as authors

meet all four criteria; it is not the role of journal editors to

determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship

or to arbitrate authorship conflicts. If agreement cannot be

reached about who qualifies for authorship, the institu-

tion(s) where the work was performed, not the journal

editor, should be asked to investigate. If authors request

removal or addition of an author after manuscript submis-

sion or publication, journal editors should seek an expla-

nation and signed statement of agreement for the requested

Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals

change from all listed authors and from the author to be

removed or added.

The corresponding author is the one individual who

takes primary responsibility for communication with the

journal during the manuscript submission, peer review,

and publication process, and typically ensures that all the

journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing

details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical

trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of

interest forms and statements, are properly completed, al-

though these duties may be delegated to one or more co-

authors. The corresponding author should be available

throughout the submission and peer-review process to re-

spond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be

available after publication to respond to critiques of the

work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for

data or additional information should questions about the

paper arise after publication. Although the corresponding

author has primary responsibility for correspondence with

the journal, the ICMJE recommends that editors send cop-

ies of all correspondence to all listed authors.

When a large multi-author group has conducted the

work, the group ideally should decide who will be an au-

thor before the work is started and confirm who is an

author before submitting the manuscript for publication.

All members of the group named as authors should meet

all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the

final manuscript, and they should be able to take public

responsibility for the work and should have full confidence

in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other group

authors. They will also be expected as individuals to com-

plete conflict-of-interest disclosure forms.

Some large multi-author groups designate authorship

by a group name, with or without the names of individu-

als. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group,

the corresponding author should specify the group name if

one exists, and clearly identify the group members who can

take credit and responsibility for the work as authors. The

byline of the article identifies who is directly responsible

for the manuscript, and MEDLINE lists as authors which-

ever names appear on the byline. If the byline includes a

group name, MEDLINE will list the names of individual

group members who are authors or who are collaborators,

sometimes called non-author contributors, if there is a note

associated with the byline clearly stating that the individual

names are elsewhere in the paper and whether those names

are authors or collaborators.

3. Non-Author Contributors

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above

criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but

they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that

alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a con-

tributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general

supervision of a research group or general administrative

support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language

editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do

not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually

or together as a group under a single heading (e.g., “Clin-

ical Investigators” or “Participating Investigators”), and

their contributions should be specified (e.g., “served as scien-

tific advisors,” “critically reviewed the study proposal,” “col-

lected data,” “provided and cared for study patients”, “partic-

ipated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript”).

Because acknowledgment may imply endorsement by

acknowledged individuals of a study’s data and conclu-

sions, editors are advised to require that the corresponding

author obtain written permission to be acknowledged from

all acknowledged individuals.