Purpose and Scope
This policy establishes Treata Scholars requirements for authorship and contributorship. It is intended to ensure that credit is assigned fairly, responsibility is identifiable, and readers can understand who contributed to the work.
Journal-specific instructions may define how author contributions are submitted or displayed, but they must remain consistent with the principles in this policy.
Principles of Authorship
Authorship combines credit with accountability. An author should have made a meaningful intellectual contribution to the work, participated sufficiently in its development or critical revision, approved the version to be published, and accepted responsibility for the integrity of the contribution and the work as a whole within an appropriate sphere.
For biomedical and health-science journals, Treata journals may apply the four-part authorship criteria commonly used in medical publishing. Contributors who satisfy the substantive contribution criterion should be given a reasonable opportunity to participate in the remaining activities required for authorship rather than being excluded from authorship arbitrarily.
Contributorship and CRediT
Contributor-role statements can improve transparency by describing activities such as conceptualization, methodology, investigation, data curation, analysis, software, visualization, writing, supervision, or project administration. Journals may use the CRediT taxonomy or another structured contribution model where appropriate.
A contributor taxonomy describes roles; it does not by itself determine who qualifies as an author. Authorship eligibility and contribution descriptions should therefore be considered separately.
Unacceptable Authorship Practices
Gift, guest, honorary, ghost, purchased, coerced, or otherwise misleading authorship is inconsistent with Treata standards. Individuals should not be added because of seniority, institutional position, funding, routine supervision, or anticipated influence when they do not meet the applicable authorship requirements.
Likewise, a qualifying contributor should not be omitted to conceal involvement, commercial participation, writing assistance, analysis, or another material contribution.
Corresponding Author Responsibilities
The corresponding author serves as a primary communication point during submission and publication and should ensure that author information, contribution statements, disclosures, approvals, and required declarations are complete and communicated to co-authors.
Corresponding-author status does not confer greater ownership of the work or reduce the accountability of other authors. Journals may require confirmation from all authors at submission, revision, acceptance, or when authorship changes are requested.
Authorship Changes
Requests to add, remove, reorder, or otherwise change authorship after submission require explanation and appropriate agreement from affected authors. Editors may request contribution information or other documentation and should consider whether the request indicates a dispute, omission, inappropriate attribution, or other integrity concern.
After acceptance or publication, authorship changes require heightened scrutiny. A published authorship change should be made transparently through an appropriate correction or other record-linked notice when necessary.
Group and Collaborative Authorship
Large collaborations may use group authorship, consortium names, or detailed contributor lists where this accurately reflects the work and is compatible with indexing and journal practice. The manuscript should make clear which individuals accept authorship accountability and how other contributors are identified.
Responsibility should not become untraceable merely because a study involves a large group.
Artificial Intelligence and Non-Human Tools
AI systems, language models, software agents, and other non-human tools cannot be authors because they cannot provide accountable approval, manage conflicts, enter publishing agreements, or take responsibility for the integrity of a scholarly work.
Human authors remain responsible for the accuracy, originality, attribution, confidentiality, and integrity of content produced or modified with AI assistance. Required AI-use disclosures are governed by the Treata AI policy and journal instructions.
Authorship Disputes and Concerns
Editors may seek clarification when authorship information is inconsistent, disputed, or raises integrity concerns. Publishers and editors can assess compliance with publication requirements but are not always positioned to adjudicate factual disputes about contributions that require institutional investigation.
Where appropriate, the journal may request that the relevant institution or other competent body examine the dispute while the journal determines what editorial action is needed for the manuscript or record.
Journal Implementation and Version Control
This policy is publisher mandatory. Journals may specify contribution-statement formats, group-authorship arrangements, corresponding-author procedures, or article-type requirements, provided these do not weaken the principles of accurate credit and accountable authorship.
Material changes to this policy should be versioned and preserved. The applicable journal instructions and policy version should remain identifiable for historical submissions and published content.
Version Control
Version 1.0. This page is the canonical publisher-level policy text for the current version. Material revisions should receive a new version or effective date, and superseded versions should remain identifiable so that the policy applicable at an earlier point in the publication lifecycle can be determined.