Authorship pillar · 11 guides
What is authorship?
In research, authorship is the formal recognition that a person made a substantial intellectual contribution to a publication — and accepts accountability for it. Who qualifies is decided by authorship criteria, not by who simply funded, supervised or supplied the work.
The ICMJE criteria for authorship
The dominant framework for deciding who may be an author is the ICMJE’s four criteria, all of which must be met. An author should: (1) have made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data; (2) have drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content; (3) have approved the final version to be published; and (4) agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Contributing funding, materials or general supervision alone does not meet this bar — such help belongs in the acknowledgements or a contributor-roles statement instead.
Authorship versus contributorship and CRediT
Authorship answers who counts as an author; contributorship answers what each person did. The two are complementary, not competing. The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is the standard — 14 defined roles, from Conceptualization to Funding acquisition — that makes contributorship structured and machine-readable. Crucially, CRediT does not decide authorship: the ICMJE itself notes that the taxonomy complements the authorship criteria rather than replacing them. Many journals now ask for both an author list (determined by the criteria) and a CRediT statement (recording each author’s roles).
Why authorship matters
Authorship is the currency of academic careers — it drives hiring, promotion and funding decisions. That is why its meaning is defined so carefully, why author order and the corresponding-author role carry real weight, and why disputes over who is named, and in what order, are a recognised research-integrity issue. The guides below cover each of these questions in turn.
Explore the pillar
Authorship guides
Corresponding author
What is a corresponding author?
The corresponding author is the named author who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during submission, peer review and publication, and who acts as the point of contact for readers after the paper appears.
Read →Co-authorship
What is co-authorship?
Co-authorship is the sharing of formal authorship of a research output between two or more people, each of whom has made a contribution that meets the relevant authorship criteria and each of whom shares accountability for the work.
Read →Authorship criteria
What are the criteria for authorship?
Authorship criteria are the agreed conditions a person must meet to be listed as an author of a research output; the most widely used are the four criteria set out in the ICMJE Recommendations, which an author must satisfy in full.
Read →ICMJE
What is the ICMJE?
The ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) is a working group of medical-journal editors whose Recommendations — including the widely used four authorship criteria — set the dominant standards for the conduct, reporting and publication of medical research.
Read →Meaning & synonyms
Authorship: meaning, synonyms and definition
Authorship means the state of being the author of a work — and in research it carries a specific meaning: being formally named as a person who made a qualifying intellectual contribution to a publication and who accepts accountability for it.
Read →Contributorship
What is contributorship?
Contributorship is the model of recording exactly what each person did on a research output, rather than relying on the binary signal of whether someone is named as an author — and it is what the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) operationalises.
Read →Author order
What is the order of authorship?
The order of authorship is the sequence in which authors are listed in a publication’s byline; the convention varies by discipline, but it commonly signals relative contribution, with the most important positions at the start and end of the list.
Read →Disputes
How are authorship disputes prevented and resolved?
Authorship disputes are disagreements over who should be listed as an author, in what order, or on what basis; most are preventable by agreeing authorship early, and unresolved cases are handled through institutional processes and COPE guidance rather than by journals adjudicating contribution.
Read →AI authorship
Can an AI be an author?
Generative-AI tools cannot be listed as authors of a research output: the major editorial bodies agree that an author must be able to take responsibility and be accountable for the work, which an AI cannot do — but authors must disclose substantive AI use.
Read →Group authorship
What is group authorship?
Group authorship (also called corporate or collaborative authorship) is the attribution of a research output to a named group — a consortium, study team or collaboration — sometimes alongside individual authors, with specific conventions for the byline and for indexing.
Read →Guidelines roundup
Authorship guidelines: a guide to the major frameworks
Authorship guidelines are the rules different publishers and style bodies set out for who may be an author and how authorship is reported; the major ones — ICMJE, COPE, APA, JAMA, Nature and IEEE — share core principles but differ in detail.
Read →Common questions
Authorship FAQ
What is authorship?+
In research, authorship is the formal recognition that a person made a substantial intellectual contribution to a publication and accepts accountability for it. It is determined by authorship criteria — most commonly the ICMJE’s four criteria — not by who simply provided funding, materials or general supervision.
How do you define authorship?+
Authorship is defined as being a named author of a work, having originated or substantially contributed to its intellectual content and agreeing to be answerable for its integrity. The dominant formal definition, from the ICMJE, requires a substantial contribution, involvement in drafting or revising, approval of the final version, and accountability for the work.
Who qualifies as an author?+
Under the widely used ICMJE criteria, an author must meet all four conditions: a substantial contribution to the work; drafting or critically revising it; approving the final version; and agreeing to be accountable for it. Contributing only funding, materials or data collection does not, on its own, qualify someone for authorship.
What is the difference between authorship and contributorship?+
Authorship is the formal status of being a named author, decided by authorship criteria. Contributorship records what each person actually did, using a structured vocabulary such as CRediT. Authorship answers "who counts as an author?"; contributorship answers "what did each person contribute?".
Does CRediT decide who is an author?+
No. CRediT describes the roles each contributor played; it does not determine who qualifies as an author. The ICMJE notes that CRediT complements authorship criteria rather than replacing them — the criteria still decide authorship, and CRediT records the contributions.
The step most authors miss
Doing CRediT right? Don’t stop at the statement.
A CRediT statement credits you inside one paper. The recognition CRediT was built for happens when those roles are tied to you, persistently. Sign in with your ORCID — free — and claim your CRediT contributions on casrai.org, the home of the standard. They become a verified, portable part of your identity, not a line that disappears into one PDF.
Free: claim your contributions, then export a journal-ready CRediT statement, schema.org structured data, JATS XML, CSV or BibTeX — and preview your public profile. A membership publishes that profile publicly and verifies the journals you serve.
