Authorship Policy

Who qualifies as an author

BORJSS applies the four criteria set out by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, which are the standard across scholarly publishing. An author must meet all four:

1. Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of its data;
2. Drafting the manuscript, or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
3. Final approval of the version submitted for publication;
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work — meaning that questions about the accuracy or integrity of any part are properly investigated and resolved.

Criteria three and four apply to every listed author without exception. An author who contributed to one section is still accountable for the whole, and must have read and approved what is being submitted under their name.

Anyone who meets the first criterion should be given the opportunity to meet the others. Excluding a qualifying contributor is as serious as including someone who does not qualify.

Contributions that are acknowledged

Real and valuable contributions that do not meet all four criteria belong in the acknowledgements, with the contribution described and the person’s permission obtained. These typically include:

• Securing funding, alone;
• General supervision of a research group, alone;
• Providing access to a site, a population or materials;
• Data entry, transcription, translation or routine data collection;
• Language editing, proofreading or technical writing assistance;
• Comments on a draft that did not amount to critical revision.

Use of a generative AI tool is never acknowledged as a contribution of this kind. AI tools cannot be authors and cannot be acknowledged as collaborators; their use is disclosed separately under the AI-assisted writing policy.

Improper authorship

All four are treated as misconduct under the publication ethics policy. The journal recognises that coercive authorship is difficult for a junior researcher to refuse. A student or early-career researcher who raises such a concern with the editorial office will have it handled confidentially, and the journal will not disclose their identity to the person concerned.

Order of authors

The journal does not impose a convention on author order. Ordering practice differs across social science disciplines — contribution order in some, alphabetical in others — and the choice is the authors’.

What the journal requires is that the order be agreed by all authors before submission, and that it not be changed afterwards without the agreement of all. Where the order carries a specific meaning, or where two authors contributed equally, say so in a footnote.

The corresponding author

One author is designated corresponding author. This is an administrative role, not a mark of seniority, and it carries specific duties:

• Managing communication with the journal through submission, review and production;
• Confirming that every listed author has seen and approved the submitted version and any revision;
• Ensuring that competing interests, funding, ethics approval and data availability are declared accurately for all authors;
• Remaining reachable after publication to respond to queries about the work;
• Acting on any error or concern raised, including initiating a correction.

The corresponding author’s email address is published with the article. Where it is an institutional address that may lapse, adding an ORCID iD keeps the author findable.

Contribution statement

Every accepted manuscript carries a contribution statement, published with the article. It names each author and states what they did — the journal accepts either CRediT taxonomy terms or a plain sentence per author.

A statement in which every author is credited with everything is not accepted; the point of the statement is to distinguish contributions. Where authorship is alphabetical and contribution genuinely equal, say that explicitly instead.

Affiliations and identifiers

Each author lists the institution at which the work was carried out. A subsequent move is recorded as a present-address note rather than by replacing the original affiliation. Authors with more than one relevant affiliation may list both.

An ORCID iD is strongly encouraged for every author and required for the corresponding author. It distinguishes authors who share a name and keeps the attribution durable — which matters most for authors publishing from institutions that are not widely indexed.

Changing the author list

Adding, removing or reordering authors after submission requires a written request to the editorial office from the corresponding author, stating the reason, together with written confirmation of agreement from every author — including the person being added or removed.

Requests received without complete agreement are not actioned; the manuscript is held until the matter is resolved. Changes after acceptance are made only where the reason is compelling, and changes after publication require a published correction under the retraction and correction policy.

Disputes

A journal is not able to adjudicate who contributed what to a piece of research — it was not present, and it has no means of establishing the facts. The journal therefore follows COPE guidance:

1. On being notified of a dispute, the journal suspends handling of the manuscript, or, where already published, considers an expression of concern.
2. The authors are asked to resolve it between themselves and report the agreed outcome in writing.
3. Where they cannot, the matter is referred to the institution at which the research was conducted, which is the body able to investigate it.
4. The journal acts on the institution’s finding, correcting the record if the article has been published.

A manuscript under an unresolved authorship dispute is not published.

Deceased and uncontactable authors

Where an author dies before publication, they remain listed and a footnote records this. The corresponding author confirms that the deceased author had approved the substance of the work, and, where practicable, informs their next of kin or department.

Where an author cannot be contacted for approval of a revision, the corresponding author must tell the editorial office rather than proceeding on their behalf. The journal will decide how to proceed, and will not publish work an author has not approved unless satisfied that every reasonable effort to reach them has been made.

Questions about any of the above can be sent to ceoborjss@gmail.com.