Authorship gives credit for a piece of research and carries responsibility for it. PatternIQ Mining (PIQM) follows the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and of COPE.
Who qualifies as an author
An author must meet all four of these conditions:
- a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data;
- drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
- approval of the final version to be published; and
- agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.
People who helped with the work but do not meet all four conditions, for example by providing technical help, general supervision, language editing or funding, should be named in the Acknowledgements with their permission.
Practices that are not acceptable
- Gift or guest authorship: listing someone who did not contribute to the work.
- Ghost authorship: leaving out someone who did.
- Selling, buying or exchanging authorship.
- Listing an AI tool as an author. AI tools cannot take responsibility for a work. See the policy on the Use of AI and AI-Assisted Tools.
Corresponding author
One author acts as corresponding author and is responsible for:
- communication with the journal before and after publication;
- confirming that every author has approved the submitted and the final version;
- making sure that names, affiliations and email addresses are correct;
- coordinating the response to reviewers and passing decisions on to the co-authors.
Author information and contributions
The full name, institutional affiliation and email address of every author must be given at submission. Authors are encouraged to provide an ORCID iD. Manuscripts should include an "Author Contributions" statement describing what each author did; the CRediT taxonomy is recommended.
Changes to authorship
Adding, removing or reordering authors after submission requires a written request to the editorial office that explains the reason and is agreed by all authors, including any author being added or removed. Requests are decided by the editor. Changes after publication are made only through a published correction. See Corrections and Retractions.
Authorship disputes
The journal cannot judge who did what in a research project. Where authors cannot agree, the journal asks their institution to resolve the matter and follows the relevant COPE guidance.