Authorship criteria

All persons designated as authors should qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify should be listed. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from inception to published article. The name and order of the authors cannot be changed once the article is provisionally accepted.

Authorship credit should be based only on:

  •  Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work
  •  Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content
  •  Final approval of the version to be published
  •  Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved

Conditions 1, 2, 3 and 4 must all be met. Acquisition of funding, the collection of data, downloading references or general supervision of the research group, by themselves, do not justify authorship. Please read ICMJE guidelines in details at http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html

The order of authorship on the byline should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Authors should be prepared to explain the order in which authors are listed. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the authors.

Unless all authors have read, reviewed and approved, the manuscript, it would NOT be processed.

For a study carried out in a single institute, the number of authors should not exceed six. For a case-report and for a review article, the number of authors should not exceed four. For short communication, the number of authors should not be more than three. A justification should be included, if the number of authors exceeds these limits, even if from a Multicentric unit.

If Data is published from Disserations/ Thesis, then it shall be declared in the covering letter - with details of the university; year; title; Guide and Co-guide ONLY with consent of the Institution.

PLEASE ENSURE THAT ALL AUTHOR DETAILS ARE INCLUDED IN THE MAILING ADDRESS. PLEASE DO NOT DIRECT ALL MAILS TO SINGLE ADDRESS OR BLOCK ALL EMAIL TO AUTHORS. THIS HAS BEEN INCLUDED TO INCREASE AND INDICATE THE TRANSPARENCY OF THE SUBMISSION PROCESS