Authorship requires public accountability for published work. All persons named as authors must qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify must be named. Each author must have contributed directly to the intellectual work reported and take public responsibility for the content of the article. Each author must sign a Manuscript Agreement form.
1) Criteria for Authorship
Each author must meet all three of the following criteria.
1. Conceived and planned the work that led to the article or played an important role in interpreting the results, or both.
2. Wrote the article or suggested important intellectual content for its composition or revision.
3. Approved the version to be published.
2) Multiple Authors
The order of naming multiple authors should be a decision of the authors. The corresponding author should be prepared to explain the order of names.
A group may be named as a coauthor of work published by a research network, multi-center trial team, or other group. All articles must have an individual as first author. One or more individuals may author the article “for” the group or authorship may be delegated to a writing committee. A full list of names of group members who qualify for authorship may be listed. Others may be named in the Acknowledgments.
3) Acknowledgments
Other roles may be important to the research but do not, by themselves, justify authorship. Such roles include: leading organizations, acquiring funding, collecting data, contributing patients, and preparing the manuscript. All others who made substantial contributions to the work but who do not qualify as authors should be named in the Acknowledgments, with descriptions of what they did. Authors should have on file written permission of each person acknowledged to be so listed.
4) Outside Writers/Editors
If outside writers or editors are involved in the manuscript, they must be listed in the Acknowledgments or included as authors. If they are listed in the Acknowledgments, the author must obtain their written permission to be so listed.
5) Machine Learning Tools
Machine learning tools such as ChatGPT cannot be listed as authors. If such tools were used to generate drafts of the submitted manuscript, this should be disclosed in the Acknowledgments. Because these tools draw from previously written text, there is a high risk of plagiarism without appropriate attribution. Using someone else’s text without attribution is plagiarism, whether or not intentional. All human authors of manuscripts that are written with the assistance of a ML tool are responsible for ensuring ideas and text taken from previously published work are appropriately cited with the correct citation information.
Revised 10/1/26/23
©Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.