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(Volume: 4, Issue: 4)
Why authorship declaration matters on article submission?
It is very common that most academic journals have authorship declaration as one of their editorial policies, while submitting an article to them. So, what is authorship declaration? Who are considered as authors by a journal? What are the consequences of authorship violation? What should a researcher do, while authoring an article?
Let’s have a glimpse at it…
Authorship declaration
Authorship declaration is a formal statement made during journal article submission to confirm that all the individuals, who contributed substantially to the research, are given ownership and credit to the article contents. Usually, the researcher contributing to an article can be a corresponding author or a co-author. The corresponding author only communicates to the journal on behalf of all the authors of a research article. Hence, the journal demands the corresponding author to provide the authorship declaration that contains information about him/her as well as the co-authors. This is mainly done to provide recognition to all the authors, who truly- contributed to the research discussed in the article.
Who are authors as per journals?
On receiving an authorship declaration, the journal checks for legitimate authors. A legitimate author, as seen by the journal, is one who contributes towards one or the others of the following research-related tasks.
Put forth the research notion
Gathered the related data
Contributed to the software/hardware
Performed the experimentation and analyzed the research findings
Written, edited and revised the article
Supervised the research
However, nowadays, it has become a customary practice to use the Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, like ChatGPT, SciSpace Grammarly and similar other software to assist in technical article writing with reduced plagiarism. Though such tools might aid the researcher in performing the aforementioned tasks, the journals deny their usage as an author. The reason is that the AI tools or associated software lacks accountability, human responsibility and intellectual contribution, which a human applies to research. So, does the journals accept all human authors as legitimate? No, the journal does not accept honorary authors. Honorary authors are those who have not contributed genuinely to the research, but have been included as authors out of respect, expectation or influence. Generally, the journals avoid honorary authors for various reasons. Few prime reasons include: (i) To support research integrity; (ii) To achieve rightful and timely review clarifications from the genuine contributors than from the honorary authors, who might completely lack knowledge on the reviewed research theme and (iii) To compliment the genuine contributor of research, who are sometimes a research scholar being neglected of their research contribution due to their minor exposure to the related scientific community. So, how about the funding organizations that shape or provide a research notion? Can they be considered as an author? No, not at all, because intellectual contribution is valued higher than monetary contribution in research.
Consequences of authorship violation
The journals generally check and confirm the contributor’s roles during article submission. On finding an author to be illegitimate, the journal might take the following actions.
Desk reject the research article upon submission
Retract the research article, if the article is accepted for publication or got published already
Request clarification on the contributor’s role, at very rare instances
What should a research do?
To be free of any authorship violations, the researcher acting as the corresponding author should do the following:
Include all the co-authors in the article, who are real contributors to the research
Maintain a record of the contributor’s roles and maintain transparency among the co-authors
Furnish the appropriate contributor’s roles to the journal during article submission
Avoid honorary authors, who affect the research integrity and degrade the genuine author’s reputation or recognition
Avoid using AI tools as authors to encourage human responsibility, accountability and intellectual contributions
Acknowledge AI usage, funding organization and any other body that aided research completion in the acknowledgement section of the research article
Hence, The Research Seer’s Rationale on “Why authorship declaration matters on article submission?” is:
“Render Recognition to Genuine Researchers with Increased Research Integrity and Transparency”
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