Authorship

To give appropriate credit to each author, the individual contributions of authors must be specified in the manuscript.

An ‘author’ is generally considered to be someone who has made substantive intellectual contributions to a published study. According to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, an author must have:

Acquiring or providing funding, collecting data, or general supervision of the research group, alone, rarely qualifies one for authorship.

Changes in Authorship

Authors wishing to make changes to authorship will be asked to complete our Change of Authorship Request form. Please note that changes to authorship cannot be made after acceptance of a manuscript. A change in authorship of a published article can only be amended via formal publication of an Erratum.

In line with COPE guidelines, INNOVATION, requires written confirmation from all authors that they agree with any proposed changes in authorship of submitted manuscripts or published articles. This confirmation must be via direct email from each author. It is the corresponding author’s responsibility to ensure that all authors confirm that they agree with the proposed changes. If there is disagreement among the authors concerning authorship and a satisfactory agreement cannot be reached, the authors must contact their institution(s) for a resolution. It is not the INNOVATION Editor’s responsibility to resolve authorship disputes.

Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the ‘Acknowledgements’ Section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include someone who provided purely technical help or writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support.

Science, Medical or Technical Writers

The role of a Scientific, Medical or Technical writer (or anyone who assisted with the preparation of the manuscript) must be explicitly stated either in the Acknowledgments or, if sufficiently justified, as a co-author, along with their source of funding, per the professional organization’s guidelines:

Commercial Organizations

Authors from pharmaceutical companies, or other commercial organizations that sponsor clinical trials, should declare these as Conflicts of Interest on submission. They should also adhere to the Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Pharmaceutical Companies (GPP2), which guide such authors to write manuscripts responsibly and ethically. The guidelines also apply to any companies or individuals that work on industry-sponsored publications, such as freelance writers, contract research organizations and communications companies. Advertorial articles will not be published in INNOVATION.

Plagiarism

CTOR PRESS is a member of CrossCheck’s plagiarism detection initiative and takes seriously all cases of publication misconduct. Any suspected cases of covert duplicate manuscript submission will be handled as outlined in the COPE guidelines and the Editor may contact the authors’ institution (see Misconduct Policy for more information).

Self-Plagiarism

Authors should be aware that replication of text from their own previous publications is self-plagiarism. Authors should make every attempt to avoid this, but if it is not possible, the authors must indicate in their cover letter what portions of the INNOVATION submission have previously been published. The INNOVATION Editor will determine if the submission, with the identified self-plagiarized sections, are acceptable for peer review in INNOVATION.