Authorship, acknowledgments, and contributor roles

Who counts as an author?

An author is someone who made a substantial intellectual contribution to the work and is accountable for it. A widely used formal definition comes from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (external link), which recommends that authorship be based on all four of the following criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
2. Drafting the work or reviewing 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, so that questions about the accuracy or integrity of any part of it are appropriately investigated and resolved.

The ICMJE criteria were written for medical journals, but many journals in other fields adopt them or similar definitions, and some disciplines have their own norms. The COPE discussion document on authorship (external link) notes that definitions differ but share two minimum requirements: a substantial contribution to the work and accountability for the work and its published form.

The ICMJE also makes a point that is easy to miss: the criteria should not be used to exclude colleagues. Everyone who meets the first criterion should have the opportunity to take part in reviewing, drafting, and approving the manuscript.

Describing contributions with CRediT

An author list says who is responsible, but not who did what. The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) (external link) fills that gap with 14 standard roles that journals can use in contribution statements. It was approved as an ANSI/NISO standard, Z39.104-2022, in 2022. The roles are:

• Conceptualization
• Data curation
• Formal analysis
• Funding acquisition
• Investigation
• Methodology
• Project administration
• Resources
• Software
• Supervision
• Validation
• Visualization
• Writing – original draft
• Writing – review & editing

CRediT describes contributions; it does not decide who qualifies as an author. Someone might hold a role such as Funding acquisition or Resources without meeting a journal’s authorship criteria, in which case the contribution belongs in the acknowledgments. Check whether your target journal uses CRediT, a different contribution format, or none at all.

Acknowledgments versus authorship

According to the ICMJE, contributors who meet fewer than all four criteria should not be listed as authors but should be acknowledged. The examples it gives include acquiring funding, general supervision of a research group, general administrative support, and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Because an acknowledgment may imply endorsement of the work, the ICMJE advises editors to require the corresponding author to obtain written permission from everyone acknowledged.

Guest, gift, and ghost authorship

Many authorship problems fall into three patterns, each of which misrepresents who is responsible for the work. COPE provides a flowchart for editors on ghost, guest, or gift authorship (external link) in submitted manuscripts.

Guest authorship

Listing someone who did not make a substantial contribution, often a senior or well-known researcher, in the hope that the name will lend weight to the paper.

Gift authorship

Listing someone as a favor, a reward, or in expectation of reciprocity rather than for their contribution to the work. The terms guest and gift authorship are often used interchangeably.

Ghost authorship

Omitting someone who made a substantial contribution, such as writing a significant part of the manuscript, so that their role, and any interests behind it, are hidden from readers.

Each pattern weakens accountability. A guest or gift author may be unable to answer questions about work they did not do, and an unnamed contributor may conceal a conflict of interest. Under COPE’s flowchart, a journal that suspects these problems may suspend review, ask the authors about their contributions, correct the author list, and consider notifying the authors’ institutions.

Corresponding author and author order

The corresponding author

The corresponding author is the main contact with the journal. Under the ICMJE recommendations, this person takes primary responsibility for communication during submission, peer review, and publication; makes sure the journal’s administrative requirements, such as authorship details, ethics approval, and disclosures, are completed; and should remain available after publication to respond to critiques and requests for data or additional information.

Corresponding is a role, not a rank. In practice, the corresponding author usually also circulates decisions and proofs to co-authors and collects their approvals, so choose someone who will be reachable throughout the process.

Order of authors

There is no universal convention for author order. In many laboratory and clinical sciences, the first author made the largest direct contribution and the last author often leads the group. In some fields, such as mathematics and parts of economics, alphabetical order is common. Many journals allow a note indicating equal contribution. The ICMJE states that order should be decided collectively by the author group, not by editors, so agree on it early and record the reasoning.

Preventing and handling disputes

Authorship disputes are easier to prevent than to resolve. COPE’s guide to handling authorship disputes for new researchers (external link) recommends discussing authorship when the research is planned, agreeing it in writing, and revisiting the agreement as the work develops.

• Agree on authorship criteria, likely authors, and order at the start of a project, and write the agreement down.
• Revisit it when roles change, people join or leave, or the paper’s scope shifts.
• Deal with disagreements as they arise, using facts and published guidelines rather than seniority.
• Before submission, confirm that every author has seen and approved the final manuscript and the author list.

If a dispute reaches a journal, editors are rarely in a position to judge who did what. Journals generally require all authors to agree in writing to changes in the author list, and COPE’s guidance expects institutions to be prepared to contribute to investigations of authorship disputes. Adding, removing, or reordering authors after submission typically needs a written explanation and every author’s agreement.

AI tools and authorship

AI tools cannot be authors. The COPE position statement on authorship and AI tools (external link) explains that they cannot meet the requirements for authorship because they cannot take responsibility for the submitted work, and, as non-legal entities, cannot declare conflicts of interest or manage copyright and license agreements. COPE also states that authors who use AI tools in writing a manuscript, producing images or graphical elements, or collecting and analyzing data must disclose how the tool was used and which tool was used, and that authors remain fully responsible for the content, including any parts produced with AI.

The ICMJE takes the same position: AI and AI-assisted technologies should not be listed or cited as authors. It recommends that authors disclose AI use at submission, describing writing assistance in the acknowledgments and AI use for data collection, analysis, or figure generation in the methods.

Where editorial support fits

Professional editing sits clearly on the acknowledgment side of the line. The ICMJE lists writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading among contributions that do not by themselves qualify for authorship. An editor who improves clarity, grammar, or structure does not become an author, and responsibility for the content, data, and conclusions stays with the authors.

Some journals expect authors to acknowledge professional editing or writing support, sometimes including who paid for it; others do not ask. Follow the journal’s policy, and where it is silent, a brief acknowledgment of language editing is a transparent default. For more on the boundary between editing and authorship, see what academic editing can and cannot change and our research integrity principles.

Clear authorship protects everyone involved: it gives credit where it is due and makes accountability visible to readers, editors, and institutions. Settling it early, in writing, is the simplest way to keep it from becoming a problem later.