Authorship Criteria
Eligibility as an Author: NMJ, follows the recommendation of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) for eligibility to be considered as an author for submitted papers. The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following four (4) criteria:
- Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
- Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
- Final approval of the version to be published; AND
- 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.
Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship. General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for authorship. Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript. The order of naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript. Once submitted the order cannot be changed without the written consent of all the contributors. Authors should ensure compliance with the above guidelines as manuscripts considered to have a gift or unjustified authorships will be rejected.
Contributors should describe contributions made by each of them towards the manuscript. The description should be divided into the following categories, as applicable: concept, design, the definition of intellectual content, literature search, clinical studies, experimental studies, data acquisition, data analysis, statistical analysis, manuscript preparation, manuscript editing and manuscript review. One or more authors should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as 'guarantor'.