Like most biomedical journals, BMJ (the flagship title published by BMJ Group, formerly the British Medical Journal) builds its authorship policy on the ICMJE four-criteria test — see CASRAI’s ICMJE Authorship Criteria guide for that baseline. But BMJ is not simply a journal that cites ICMJE and stops there. It was one of the two or three journals that originated the modern shift away from a flat author byline in the first place, and its current submission requirements still carry that history forward as concrete, checkable policy: a named guarantor role, a mandatory transparency declaration signed by the lead author, individual ICMJE conflict-of-interest disclosure forms from every author, and — for some BMJ Group titles — numeric caps on author count. This guide covers what BMJ requires beyond baseline ICMJE, and where that requirement actually comes from.
Where BMJ’s policy comes from: the 1997 contributorship editorial
In 1997, then BMJ editor Richard Smith published an editorial titled “Authorship is dying: long live contributorship” (BMJ, 20 September 1997), arguing that the traditional flat author byline obscured who had actually done what, and proposed replacing it with two distinct things: a list of named contributors, each responsible only for their own stated contribution, and one or more named guarantors, who accept accountability for the integrity of the work as a whole. BMJ began publishing contributor lists and guarantor statements alongside original-research papers shortly afterward. That editorial predates ICMJE’s own explicit acknowledgement of contributorship as an acceptable alternative model, and BMJ’s current author instructions are a direct continuation of it rather than a restatement of ICMJE from scratch.
The guarantor requirement
ICMJE’s fourth authorship criterion requires that authors agree “to be accountable for all aspects of the work,” but it does not require journals to name one specific person as the accountable party. BMJ does: submissions must identify a guarantor, who is often — but not necessarily — the senior or corresponding author, and who takes on formal responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, from study inception through to the published paper. The guarantor is expected to be able to answer for the entire project, not just their own individual contribution, which is a materially different (and more specific) commitment than the general shared accountability ICMJE’s criterion 4 describes.
The transparency declaration
BMJ requires the lead author to sign a transparency declaration, an explicit statement (closely related to the EQUATOR Network’s “Declaration of transparency” initiative, which several BMJ Group and other journals adopted together) affirming that the manuscript is “an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported,” that no important aspects of the study have been omitted, and that any discrepancies from the originally planned study have been explained. This is a signed, publishable statement tied to a specific individual — the lead author — rather than a general editorial expectation, and it sits alongside, not instead of, the guarantor’s accountability for the work as a whole.
Individual ICMJE disclosure forms for every author
BMJ requires each listed author, not just the corresponding author, to complete an ICMJE conflict-of-interest disclosure form, and the competing-interests statement published with the paper must match what each author declared individually. This operationalizes ICMJE’s own conflict-of-interest recommendations into a specific per-author paperwork requirement rather than leaving disclosure format to editorial discretion.
Article-type-specific rules: the BMJ Case Reports example
Individual titles within BMJ Group layer additional, concrete rules on top of the baseline. BMJ Case Reports, for example, caps case reports at a maximum of four authors and requires that at least one of them was directly involved in the patient’s care — a numeric, checkable rule that has no equivalent in ICMJE’s own criteria, which are deliberately silent on author count and clinical-role composition.
A more recent addition: AI-use disclosure
Since April 2024, BMJ Group has required submitting authors to answer a structured set of AI-use disclosure questions in its ScholarOne submission system, covering whether and how generative AI tools were used in preparing the manuscript. This sits alongside, and is consistent with, ICMJE’s broader 2023 position that AI tools cannot be listed as authors because they cannot take accountability for the work — see CASRAI’s AI co-authorship rejection (ICMJE 2023) entry — but BMJ’s contribution is making that disclosure a specific, mandatory intake step rather than a general editorial expectation.
What BMJ does not change
BMJ does not replace or relax the underlying ICMJE four-criteria test for who qualifies as an author — a contributor still needs to meet all four ICMJE criteria to be listed as an author at all, and BMJ’s guarantor and transparency requirements are layered on top of that test, not substitutes for it. Research offices and authors already following ICMJE-based institutional policy do not need a separate authorship framework for BMJ submissions; they need to add the guarantor designation, the transparency declaration, individual disclosure forms, and (where relevant) the AI-use disclosure step to their existing ICMJE-compliant workflow.
Frequently asked questions
Is BMJ’s guarantor the same as the corresponding author?
Not necessarily. The guarantor is frequently the principal investigator or most senior member of the research group, and BMJ’s own guidance notes this can be a different person from the first or corresponding author. What matters is that someone is explicitly designated to take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole, and that this designation is disclosed to readers.
Does every BMJ Group journal use the same authorship policy?
The guarantor and transparency-declaration requirements, and the individual ICMJE disclosure-form requirement, apply broadly across BMJ Group’s research-article submissions. Some specific titles and article types — BMJ Case Reports’ four-author cap is the clearest example — add further rules on top of that shared baseline, so authors should check the specific journal’s current instructions for authors rather than assuming every BMJ Group title is identical.
Do CRediT contribution statements satisfy BMJ’s guarantor requirement?
No. A CRediT statement records who did what; it does not designate a single person as accountable for the work as a whole. BMJ’s guarantor requirement is a separate, additional step even for papers that also include a CRediT-style contribution statement.
