Authorships

Authorship

MCB follows the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines regarding authorship and contributions. Authorship should be based on the following 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 reviewing 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 those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged in the acknowledgement section.

 

The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer-review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information should questions about the paper arise after publication.

 

When the work has to be conducted by a large multi-author group, it is advised that the list of authors be decided before the work starts and confirmed before the manuscript submission. All members of that group listed as authors should have met all the above four criteria for authorship with final approval of the manuscript, and should be able to take public responsibility for the work with full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of all group authors. As such, they will be required as individuals to complete conflict-of-interest disclosure forms.

 

Submissions by any individual other than one of the listed authors will strictly not be considered. All authors will take responsibility for the content of the manuscript they submitted, and ensure they are familiar with the other authors individual contribution. 

 

Non-author Contributor

Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group under a single heading (e.g. "Clinical Investigators" or "Participating Investigators"), and their contributions should be specified (e.g., "served as scientific advisors," "critically reviewed the study proposal," "collected data," "provided and cared for study patients," "participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript").

 

Alteration to Authorship

Requests made for an authorship change after submission must be made to the editorial office with an explanation for the change, include the signature of all authors, and be submitted by the corresponding author.

 

MCB places significant importance on maintaining the integrity and transparency of authorship contributions, and the journal does not accept any requests to change the first author or corresponding author during any stage of manuscript processing. Any insistence on altering the first author or corresponding author will result in the rejection of the manuscript without further review or consideration.

 

Please note that if you have changed affiliation during the course of the research, your new affiliation could be acknowledged in a note. MCB does not normally take requests for changes to affiliations after the acceptance of manuscripts.

 

Authorship issues found after publication may result in a correction. If and when the authors are unable to resolve among themselves an authorship-related dispute, MCB may raise the issue with the authors’ institution(s) and abide by its/their guidelines. 

 

Authorship Contribution Statement

All listed authors should have substantially contributed to the manuscript and have approved the final submitted version, which should include a description of each author’s specific work and contributorship.

 

We suggest the following format for the contribution statement:

The authors confirm contribution to the paper as follows: study conception and design: X. Author, Y. Author; data collection: Y. Author; analysis and interpretation of results: X. Author, Y. Author. Z. Author; draft manuscript preparation: Y. Author. Z. Author. All authors reviewed the results and approved the final version of the manuscript.

 

 

Authorship and the Use of AI or AI-Assisted Technologies 

MCB follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) position statement when it comes to the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technology in manuscript preparation. Tools such as ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) do not meet authorship criteria and thus cannot be listed as authors on manuscripts.

 

In situations where AI or AI-assisted tools have been used in the preparation of a manuscript, this must be appropriately declared with sufficient details at submission via the cover letter. Furthermore, authors are required to be transparent about the use of these tools and disclose details of how the AI tool was used within the “Materials and Methods” section, in addition to providing the AI tool’ s product details within the “Acknowledgments” section.

 

Authors are fully responsible for the originality, validity, and integrity of the content of their manuscript and must ensure that this content complies with all of MCB’s Publication Ethics Policies. 

 

Editors and Journal Staff as Authors

In the circumstances where Editors or editorial staff of the journal submit their own studies to the journal, they shall not be involved in the reviewing process, and the review process must be made transparently and rigorously. Submissions authored by editors or editorial staff of the journal will be handled by another editor who has least COIs with the authors to minimize the bias.