Author’s Contribution

Individual contributions of authors should be specified in this section to give appropriate credit to each author.

According to ICMJE guidelines, an “author” should

  1. have made substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data
  2. have been involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content
  3. have given final approval of the version to be published
  4. agree 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.

We suggest the following format. Please use initials to refer to each author’s contribution:

 i. Authors’ information

Any relevant information about the author(s) that may aid the reader’s interpretation of the article and understand the standpoint of the author(s) can be included in this section. This may include details about the authors’ qualifications, current positions they hold at institutions or societies, or any other relevant background information. Please refer to authors using their initials.

This section SHOULD NOT be used to describe any competing interests.

All contributors who do not meet the above criteria should be listed in the acknowledgements section. Examples include a person who provided purely technical help, writing assistance, a department chair who provided only general support, or those who contributed as part of a large collaboration group.

ii. Acknowledgements

Please acknowledge anyone who contributed towards the article by making substantial contributions to conception, design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, or who was involved in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content, but who does not meet the criteria for authorship.

Please also acknowledge anyone who contributed materials essential for the study. If a language editor has made significant revision of the manuscript, we recommend that you acknowledge the editor by name, where possible.

The role of a scientific (medical) writer must be included in the acknowledgements section, including their source(s) of funding. We suggest wording such as:

 iii. Collaborating Group

If you would like the names of the individual members of a collaboration group to be searchable through their individual PubMed records, please ensure that the title of the collaboration group is included on the title page and in the submission system and also include collaborating author names as the last paragraph of the “acknowledgements” section.

Please add authors in the format First Name, Middle initial(s) (optional), Last Name. You can add institution or country information for each author but this should be consistent across all authors.

Please note that individual names may not be present in the PubMed record at the time a published article is initially included in PubMed as it takes PubMed additional time to code this information.

Authors should obtain permission to acknowledge from all those mentioned in the acknowledgements section.