Authorship principle
- Definition of authorship
An author is considered to be a person who has made a significant intellectual contribution to the study. According to international recommendations for article authorship, authors must actively participate in the following areas (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [ICMJE], 2024):
- Conception or design of the study, collection or analysis or interpretation of data.
- Drafting or critical revision of the manuscript to determine its intellectual content.
- Approval of the final version before submitting the article to the journal.
- Responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of all aspects of the reported research.
All persons designated as authors must meet all four criteria for authorship. Contributors who do not meet all criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgements section. Examples of activities that, on their own (without other contributions), do not qualify a contributor for authorship are: (a) obtaining funding; (b) general supervision of a research group; (c) general administrative support; (d) assistance with writing; (e) technical editing; (f) linguistic correction; and (g) proofreading.
It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal, to determine that all persons named as authors meet the four criteria. It is not the role of the journal editors to determine who does or does not meet the requirements for authorship or to arbitrate conflicts of authorship. In the event of a conflict, it is recommended that mediation be sought from the institution(s) where the work was carried out.
The criteria for determining the order of authorship should be decided collectively by the authors, not by the editors.
- Role of the corresponding author
The corresponding author is responsible for communicating with the journal during the submission, peer review, and publication of the manuscript.
Ensuring that all administrative requirements of the journal are completed and reported correctly.
Being available during the editorial process and after publication to respond to queries and requests for additional information.
API will send copies of all editorial correspondence to all listed authors.
- Author contributions
Authors should include a statement of contributions in the manuscript, preferably using the CReDiT taxonomy.
https://www.niso.org/publications/z39104-2022-credit
- Authorship changes
After submission: any changes must be approved by all authors. Changes in the order, addition or removal of authors are permitted.
During peer review: no changes in authorship or order are permitted.
After acceptance: no changes in authorship, corresponding author or author sequence are permitted.
Final approval is at the discretion of the Editor-in-Chief of the API journal.
- Author identification
Authors are encouraged to include their ORCID identifier on the title page of the manuscript.
- Deceased or incapacitated authors
In these cases, co-authors must obtain approval from a legal representative of the affected author for inclusion.
- Authorship disputes
The API journal does not investigate or resolve authorship disputes. These must be resolved between the authors or through their institutions. The journal reserves the right to withdraw a published manuscript or article.
- Copyright
Copyright belongs to the authors. By accepting publication, authors authorise the journal to edit, translate, reproduce and disseminate the manuscript, with the API Journal being the primary means of publication.
Authors retain their moral rights. Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. The journal assigns DOIs and allows the deposit of preprints and postprints.
- Use of artificial intelligence (AI) assisted technology
Authors must explicitly declare the use of AI technologies in the cover letter and in the manuscript. AI should not be listed as an author or cited as such.
The use of AI to fabricate data, manipulate results, or generate misleading content constitutes a serious breach of ethics and may result in rejection or retraction.
The API journal recommends the use of AI solely as a support, not as a substitute for critical thinking and original intellectual contribution.
Penabad-Camacho, L., et al. (2024). Heredia Declaration: Principles on the use of Artificial Intelligence in scientific publishing. Revista Electrónica Educare, 28(S), 1–10.
