Authorship
Authorship can refer to individuals or groups that create an idea or develop the publication that disseminates that intellectual or creative work; however, appropriately acknowledging roles and contributions is not always a simple task. Journals are encouraged to provide clear, transparent guidance and policies for authors on providing authorship credentials, while authors must be responsible for adhering to such policies and discipline-specific guidelines.
​​​​​​​The term authorship can refer to the creator or originator of an idea (eg, the author of the theory of relativity) or the individual or individuals who develop and bring to fruition the product that disseminates intellectual or creative works (eg, the author of a poem or a scholarly article). Authorship conveys significant privileges, responsibilities, and legal rights; in the scholarly arena, it also forms the basis for rewards and career advancement. Various disciplines have norms, guidelines, and rules governing authorship; some of those rules preserve the lineage of ideas or works, assign credit for the conception, implementation and analysis of studies or experiments to validate theory or explain hypotheses, and the actual writing of work to disseminate knowledge. Authors are accountable for following discipline-specific guidelines when they engage in authorship activities; journal editors and publishers are accountable for making author guidelines transparent and appropriate for the medium and genre (scholarly books, journal articles, creative writing). At a minimum, authors should guarantee that they have participated in creating the work as presented and that they have not violated any other author’s legal rights (eg, copyright) in the process.