Authorship policy

Who may be listed as an author

Only those who made a substantial intellectual contribution to the work may be listed as authors. This means taking part in designing the research, collecting or analyzing the data, interpreting the results or writing the manuscript, as well as approving the final version and being willing to answer for its content.

People who helped without reaching that level (technical support, field access, language editing or funding) are named in the acknowledgments, not as authors.

Unacceptable practices

Honorary authorship (listing someone for their position or prestige without a real contribution) and ghost authorship (leaving out someone who did contribute) are breaches of academic integrity and grounds for rejection or retraction.

Order of authors

The order reflects the authors' own agreement and must be set at submission. Once the paper is accepted it is not changed, except at the justified request of all authors in writing.

Declared contributions

The journal uses the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy): each author specifies their actual contribution (conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, investigation, writing, review, supervision), and this information is published with the article.

Identification

An ORCID iD is mandatory for all authors. It distinguishes researchers with similar names unambiguously and links each person's work correctly.

Number of authors

A maximum of five authors per paper is accepted, unless the nature of the research justifies more.