JHRS Ghost and guest authorship policy

Ghost authorship occurs when someone makes a significant contribution to a manuscript without due acknowledgement of their role.

Guest authorship occurs when an individual is named as an author of a manuscript when they do not meet authorship criteria.

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences considers that both ghost and guest authorship are breaches of publication ethics, and believes they violate readers’ trust in scientific reporting and can potentially bias medical literature. The Journal’s editors and readers need to be confident that authors listed have undertaken the work and that the written manuscript reflects their work; public confidence and scientific integrity depend on this.

Commercial interests should not inappropriately influence our scientific knowledge base.

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences acknowledges the role of professional medical writers and requires that all writing assistance be disclosed.

To support transparent and complete authorship reporting, Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences expects authors to fulfill the following requirements:Authors must provide a contributor statement that describes the specific contribution of each author to the manuscript and shows how each author meets the 3 authorship criteria of the ICMJE. For example:

“Peter White participated in finalizing the study methodology, managed the quantitative component and was the principal writer of the manuscript. Katarina Johnson conceived the project, oversaw the data collection and analysis and participated in all phases of the writing. Luke Fernandez helped implement the study, worked on finalizing the methodology and contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript. Angela Mayer supervised the data collection, described the qualitative methods used in the study and reviewed all manuscript drafts. Julia Walsh conducted the data analysis and participated in editing and reviewing manuscript drafts. John Petersen conceived the study and oversaw its implementation and participated in the writing of the manuscript. James Stuart helped guide the analysis and participated in the writing. All of the authors approved the final version of the manuscript.”Authors should specify who wrote the first draft of the article (and for research studies, who wrote the protocol and did the statistical analyses). If the people named are not authors, the Journal editors will contact them to confirm their contribution.

Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be named in an Acknowledgements section with their contribution clearly described. Vague statements in the Acknowledgments section, such as “We thank XX” (without specifying for what), or “XY provided editorial assistance,” will not be accepted.

Authors should retain copies of drafts to facilitate investigations of possible misconduct.

Any and all assistance from professional writers must in every case be appropriately acknowledged and described and their funding source named.

Professional medical writers whose contribution to a manuscript qualifies them as an author according to the ICMJE criteria for authorship must be listed as authors, with their affiliations and competing interests provided and the source of their funding named.

Professional writers whose contribution to a manuscript does not qualify them as an author according to the ICMJE criteria for authorship must be named in the Acknowledgements section, with their contribution clearly described and their funding source named. Authors are requested to contact the Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences editors to obtain clarification as to the appropriate place in the manuscript to acknowledge and describe the contribution of a medical writer.

Journal of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences strongly believes in transparent reporting. Ghost and guest authorship are dishonest, and the Journal editors intend to maintain processes that improve public accountability and the credibility of scientific research reporting.