Authorship and contributorship

Research Publishing Ethics Guidelines for Journals

We acknowledge that different disciplines and publication formats have different norms for who is listed as an author. We expect all authors on any content submitted to Cambridge to be in agreement that the authors listed would all be considered authors according to disciplinary norms, and that no authors who would reasonably be considered an author have been excluded. We also expect all listed authors to take responsibility for the integrity of the work and to be accountable for it. In the event of a dispute or change request (including author order or designation) at any stage of the publishing process, we will be guided by the relevant COPE flowchart, guidance, or case precedents in deciding the appropriate action(s). If these changes raise concerns about the broader integrity of the work further investigation may follow.

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Authorship

Prospective authors should refer to individual journals’ publishing ethics policies for additional authorship criteria. Where no other criteria are specified, authorship should be based on the below principles.[1]

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and/or
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and/or
Final approval of the version to be published; and
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Journals may have their own policies on anonymous or pseudonymous authorship, consortia authorship, equal first authorship, appendix authorship, and other authorship approaches.

Corresponding authors

The corresponding author's specific responsibilities include:

Manuscript correction and proofreading. Handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts;
Agreeing to and signing the Author Publishing Agreement on behalf of relevant co-authors and/or arranging for any third-party copyright owners’ signature;
Arranging for payment of an APC (article processing charge) where one is required or requesting a discretionary waiver if necessary. The affiliation of the corresponding author may be used to determine eligibility for discounted or waived APCs under transformative agreements and author equity initiatives;
Acting on behalf of all co-authors in responding to queries from all sources post-publication, including questions relating to publishing ethics, reuse of content, or the availability of data, materials, resources etc.

Requests to change the corresponding author after submission will be subject to the same scrutiny as any authorship change (see above). This applies to both pre- and post-publication of the article.

Contributorship

We encourage authors to list anyone who does not meet the criteria for authorship in an Acknowledgments section in their publication with permission, for example to recognise the contributions of anyone who provided research or writing assistance. Some journals have adopted contributorship taxonomies such as CReDiT, and/or may publish contributorship statements within manuscripts. Please refer to individual journal information pages for further details.

Disputes

We support our editors in dealing with any authorship disputes, including escalating or seeking advice on cases with COPE or referring to institutions. COPE also provides extensive resources on authorship and authorship disputes, and we encourage anyone involved in editorial decisions to familiarise themselves with these resources.

Author name changes

Cambridge is committed to inclusive and equitable policies and practices including working with all authors who wish to update their name on articles hosted on Cambridge Core. An author who has changed their name may request an author name change in journal articles. This can be done with or without a formal notice according to author preference. All changes will be accompanied by a ‘last updated’ footnote to the article. This policy extends to metadata name changes only: we do not make changes to citations or in content, nor do we make changes to third-party content where the requestor is not the author of the content.

name.change@cambridge.org to request more information or a name change.

AI Contributions to Research Content

AI use must be declared and clearly explained in publications such as research papers, just as we expect scholars to do with other software, tools and methodologies.
AI does not meet the Cambridge requirements for authorship, given the need for accountability. AI and LLM tools may not be listed as an author on any scholarly work published by Cambridge
Authors are accountable for the accuracy, integrity and originality of their research papers, including for any use of AI.
Any use of AI must not breach Cambridge’s plagiarism policy. Scholarly works must be the author’s own, and not present others’ ideas, data, words or other material without adequate citation and transparent referencing.

Please note, individual journals may have more specific requirements or guidelines for upholding this policy.

[1] Outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, available at: http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html