Authorship Critia

The journal adheres to the requirements set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors(http://www.icmje.org/) for authorship. Each author must meet criteria for Authorship, which are recommended by the ICMJE as the following 4 basic criteria:

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

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

3. Final approval of the version to be published;

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 investigated and resolved.

Corresponding author

The corresponding author is the person responsible for a submission and all communication with the journal regarding a submission. The corresponding author must notify the editors and editorial office, via the submission form, of the following: Acknowledgment of any guest author, defined as an individual who does not meet authorship criteria but has made a substantial contribution to the research or writing of a manuscript. Confirmation that there no “ghost authors”, defined as an individual who has made a substantial contribution but does not qualify as an author and has not been disclosed to the editor. Submission of ICME conflict of interest and copyright forms from each of the co-authors; conflict of interest forms are required and requisite disclosures should be reported on the manuscript’s cover page.

Study Group/Writing Committee Authorship

If study group/writing committee authorship is used and the corresponding author is the study chair, please state this on the cover page. However, if the corresponding author is no the study chair, please enclose with the submission a statement from the study chair that the group authorship as stated on the cover page and/or members of the responsible for writing committee are both correct. The journal encourages transparency of authorship to editors, reviewers and readers.

Members of the group can be listed in initial group papers in print and in subsequent papers, either by reference to an earlier manuscript, or at times for length and format reasons, in online supplemental material. Members are appropriately acknowledged on the byline “…for the XYZ Study Group” or …on behalf of the XYZ Group.” If it is believed that group members are more appropriately acknowledged by including them as authors, each must meet authorship criteria and complete the required ICMJE authorship criteria, copyright assignment, and conflict of interest forms. If the Study Group authors are suppled as an online-only file, the study group authors will not be searchable as co-authors.

Due to transparency and space limitations, the following are the journal’s policies regarding study group/writing committee authorship: if an individual is authoring for a group(e.g, a Study Chair) it should be listed as

Mei LI, MD for the XYZ Study Group

Small study groups (equal and less than 10 members) can author as the group or they can list writing committee members names “and the XYZ Study Group” as long as all members qualify as authors. Otherwise, only those who qualify should be listed and the remainder can be acknowledged.

Xin AN MD.; Hongmei ZHAO PhD; Hongfei HUANG PhD; and the XYZ Study Group

Large study groups (more than 10 members) should not author a paper as entity. In large groups it is not likely that every single member of the group or network contributed as required by the authorship criteria mentioned above. Large study group should either list the writing committee members as authors followed by “ for the XYZ Study Group” or list “ Writing committee for the XYZ Study Group*” as the author and the names of the writing committee members will be listed at the end of the article with an asterisk. Regardless, members of the writing committee must qualify as authors and complete the appropriate ICMJE authorship forms.

Xin AN MD.; Hongmei ZHAO PhD; Hongfei HUANG PhD for the XYZ Study Group OR The Writing Group for the Xin AN MD.; Hongmei ZHAO PhD; Hongfei HUANG PhD; and the XYZ Study Group* OR The ABC Collaborative Research Group Writing Committee*

To ensure that writing committee/study group members’ contributions are searchable, the submission must include a file listing each writing committee/study group member; upload as a Word file, and select “Collaborators” as the file type. When writing committee/study group members are listed as collaborators, an expandable listing under “Collaborators” should be provided as part of the article record. Expandable authorship is appropriate when an author byline includes(1) only a group name or (2) a group name, along with individual authors who are not members of the collaborative group ( that is, when author names are listed followed by “, and the XYZ group”, and the participating group member names are NOT included in the byline)

Any digression from these authorship guidelines must be addressed, prior to submission, via email to es@gzzoc.com. The Executive Editor and/or Editor-in-Chief will discuss with the corresponding author on a case-by-case basis.