Believers Journal of Health Sciences (BJHS) recognizes authorship as both scholarly credit and responsibility. Authorship should be limited to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the work and who accept appropriate accountability for the published article. Individuals who contribute to the work but do not meet the full criteria for authorship should be acknowledged appropriately rather than listed as authors.
BJHS applies the four authorship criteria described by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). An individual should meet all four criteria to qualify for authorship:
Important: A contribution to the research does not by itself establish authorship. Individuals listed as authors should meet all applicable authorship criteria stated above.
The corresponding author serves as the primary contact between the author group and BJHS during submission, peer review, publication, and relevant post-publication communication. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that the author list is accurate, confirming that all listed authors have approved the submitted and final versions of the manuscript, coordinating responses to editorial and reviewer comments, and submitting required declarations and supporting information. These responsibilities do not reduce the individual accountability of the other authors.
BJHS does not consider guest, gift, or ghost authorship to be acceptable authorship practices. These practices include:
Suspected authorship irregularities may be reviewed by the editorial team. Depending on the nature and stage of the matter, appropriate editorial action may include seeking clarification, requesting corrections to authorship information, rejecting the manuscript, or applying the journal's relevant post-publication procedures.
Group Authorship: A consortium, collaborative group, or research network may be identified as a group author where appropriate. The manuscript should clearly identify individuals who qualify for authorship and, where applicable, distinguish them from other collaborators or contributors. Authorship and contributor information should be presented transparently in the manuscript and submission metadata.
Authorship Changes: Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after initial submission must be supported by a clear explanation and agreement from the affected authors. The editorial team may request written confirmation from all authors before approving a change. Authorship changes requested after acceptance or publication require particular scrutiny and will be considered only where adequately justified and documented.
Authorship Disputes: Authors are expected to resolve authorship order and contribution disagreements within the research group or through the appropriate institutional process. BJHS may pause editorial processing while a significant authorship dispute remains unresolved. The journal does not normally determine which individual should receive authorship credit in an unresolved institutional dispute.
Authors should provide a clear Author Contribution Statement describing the contributions of each author. Where the CRediT taxonomy is used, relevant contributor roles may include Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, Supervision, Project Administration, Funding Acquisition, and Resources. Contributor roles should accurately reflect the work performed by each individual and should not be used to assign authorship to a person who does not otherwise satisfy the journal's authorship criteria.
Individuals who provide technical assistance, administrative support, language editing, general supervision, funding support, or other contributions that do not satisfy the full authorship criteria should not be listed as authors solely on that basis. Where appropriate and with their permission, such contributions may be recognized in the Acknowledgements section.
Generative artificial intelligence tools, large language models (LLMs), chatbots, and other automated systems cannot be listed as authors, co-authors, or corresponding authors because they cannot assume responsibility or accountability for scholarly work. Human authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, attribution, integrity, and appropriate use of all submitted material. The use of AI-assisted tools should be disclosed where required under the journal's applicable AI policy.
By submitting a manuscript to BJHS, the corresponding author confirms, on behalf of the author group where appropriate, that the submitted author list is accurate, all listed authors have approved the manuscript, authorship order has been agreed upon, qualifying contributors have not been intentionally omitted, and individuals who do not meet the authorship criteria have not been inappropriately listed as authors. Materially false or misleading authorship information may be treated as a publication-integrity concern and reviewed under the journal's applicable editorial policies.