Articulate

Authorship signifies credit for published work and contributes to professional development in academia. It also carries a responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of published work. Authorship and contributions should be determined prior to submission of any work based on the Authorship Guidelines published by the Office of Research at Rocky Vista University and recommendations from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Briefly, authorship should be based on the following four criteria from the ICMJE¹:

• “Substantial contributions to the conception and 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.”

All authors should meet each of the four criteria. The order of authorship can be determined by consulting the Office of Research Authorship Guidelines. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with editors during the submission, peer-review, and publication process. Any change in authorship after submission or publication requires a written rationale and signed statements of agreement from all authors, including any authors to be removed or added.

Non-author contributors include contributors who meet fewer than all four criteria listed above. Examples of non-author contributors are included in the Office of Research Authorship Guidelines document. Acknowledgment of non-author contributors is appropriate in manuscripts and descriptions may be included (e.g., served as an advisor, contributed technical editing for manuscript, etc.). Including individuals in acknowledgments implies endorsement of the work and therefore, written permission from non-authors contributors should be obtained prior to submission. Non-human authors, such as ChatGPT, should not be included as authors; please see the policy section on artificial intelligence for more details.

• Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors website. http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/. Updated May 2022. Accessed April 21, 2023. 

Non-human contributors, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, or similar technology, do not qualify for authorship. The use of these systems is not encouraged but may be permitted if this specific technology is part of the study question.  Use of artificial intelligence must be included in the acknowledgement section if used in part to write the manuscript, or in the methods section if part of the study. Findings from previous publications cannot be reproduced, and authors have the responsibility of ensuring the accuracy and integrity of the writing or content generated by artificial intelligence systems.

This policy is consistent with statements from the Committee on Publication Ethics regarding the use of artificial intelligence in research publications.

Conflicts of interest exist when an author’s professional judgement and actions may be influenced by secondary interests, primarily financial, although this category can also include conflicts from personal and professional relationships. The latter may be seen as a perceived conflict of interest, which should still be acknowledged.  

All authors are asked to submit a conflict of interest form upon submission. Previous conflict of interest statements already completed for the work under review, for example any IRB-approved research, must be included upon manuscript submission.

Conflicts of interest among peer reviewers and editors will be addressed by asking editors to recuse themselves from any decision involving manuscripts where they have a preexisting conflict of interest. Those manuscripts will be assigned to an alternate editor or reviewer in those cases. Peer reviewers and editors are prohibited from using information obtained from submissions for their own gain.

Authors should not submit the same work to more than one journal at the same time. Upon submission, all authors agree that the work is not currently submitted for review at another journal, and conversely, once under review, all authors agree not to submit to a different journal until a decision is reached or the manuscript is withdrawn.

Duplicate publication is publication of the same or nearly same work without reference to the previous publication. Duplicate publication of original work is not allowed, and a cover letter should be submitted with any submission that overlaps significantly with previously published work to notify editors. This policy does not include compilation of previously published works into a larger anthology with referencing the original publication (e.g., publishing a collection of poetry and including a previously published poem), publication of work presented in abstract or poster form, and expansion of previously published preliminary studies. If an author is including work previously published in manuscript or abstract form, those studies should be cited within the article.