Policies regarding authorship

Journal of Audiology, Otoneurology and Phoniatrics follows the recommendations by International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) as regards authorships and contributions, in which it is established that authorship bases upon four criteria:

  1. Significant participation in the conception / design of the study, data gathering or the analysis / interpretation of data;
  2. Participation in the drafting or revision of the manuscript;
  3. Approval of the manuscript’s final version for publication; and,
  4. Responsibility for the accuracy and integrity of every aspect of the research.

According to ICMJE, authors “must be able to identify which coauthors are responsible for other specific parts of the work… [and] have confidence in their coauthor’s contributions”.

ICMJE also notes that an author must have produced “substantial intellectual contributions” for the manuscript. Creative contribution is, therefore, more apt for authorship than purely mechanic work. A technician who merely acquires data, a main researcher who only obtains funding or provides supervision, a collaborator that only provides a new reagent or samples, and other research-related tasks, not creative though, do not deserve authorship on their own. These people and their contributions must be referred to in acknowledgements.

CRediT taxonomy

With a view to decreasing possible disputes from authorship conflicts, the authors interested in publishing in Journal of Audiology, Otoneurology and Phoniatrics are asked to describe the contribution of each author in function of CRediT Taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), which has been widely adopted by editors of biomedical journals that adhere to ICMJE’s recommendations. Such taxonomy must be sent together with the submission files and must be read and approved by all the authors involved.

Number of authors

The number of authors will depend on the sort of manuscript submitted. For original studies and reviews, the maximum number of authors is eight. Only in the case of multicentric studies will the maximum number of authors be twelve, as long as it is justified according to the previous guidelines.

Policies on the order and number of authors

Once the manuscript is sent, it will not be possible to make changes in the order or number of authors, consequently every issue related to authorship must be resolved before submitting the manuscript for the first time.

Corresponding author

The only person that takes main responsibility for the communication with the journal over submission, peer review and publication process, and will make sure that all the journal’s administrative requirements (such as providing authorship details, approval by the ethics committee, the proof of registration documentation, compilation of forms and declarations of conflicts of interest) are correctly completed. And even if some of such tasks may be delegated to one or more coauthors, the corresponding author must be always available along the entire process to timely answer any editorial question and must be available after publication to answer criticisms to the work and cooperate with any request from the journal to obtain further information or data. Questions on the article arise after publication.  

Responsibility for the content

When submitting the manuscript, it is assumed that each and every author has had full access to all the data in the study and takes up full and public responsibility for the integrity and accuracy of data. For that reason, JAOP declines any responsibility for possible conflicts derived from the authorship of works it publishes.

Collective authorship

In the case of collective authorship, the name of the drafters or responsible for the work will be included followed by «and the group…» when all the members of the group are considered coauthors. If the name of the group is to be included, despite not all the members are considered coauthors, the responsible authors will be mentioned followed by «on behalf of the group…» or «for the group». In any case, the names and institutions of the group members will be included as an annex at the end of the manuscript.