Authorship Policy
The Operating Room Global Journal (TORGJ) requires authorship to reflect genuine intellectual contribution and accountable participation in the work. Authorship provides scholarly credit, but it also carries responsibility for the integrity, accuracy, transparency, and published record of the research.
An author should meet all four ICMJE authorship criteria.
Manuscripts should state how individual authors contributed to the work.
Every author should approve the version submitted for publication.
Authors remain accountable for their work before and after publication.
Authorship Requires Both Contribution and Accountability
TORGJ follows the principle that authorship should not be awarded solely for seniority, supervision, funding, data collection, institutional position, administrative support, or courtesy. An individual listed as an author should satisfy the journal’s full authorship requirements and be able to take appropriate responsibility for the published work.
Important contributions that do not qualify for authorship may be recognised through acknowledgements or structured contributor statements. Proper contributorship allows individuals to receive credit without weakening the meaning and accountability associated with formal authorship.
Who Qualifies as an Author?
TORGJ applies the four ICMJE authorship criteria. An individual listed as an author should satisfy all four criteria, ensuring that authorship reflects both meaningful contribution and accountability for the published work.
Substantial Contribution
The individual should make a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work; or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
Drafting or Critical Revision
The individual should participate in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content rather than merely providing administrative or superficial editing.
Approval of the Final Version
The individual should review and approve the final version that is submitted and ultimately published, including material revisions made during the editorial process.
Accountability for the Work
The individual should agree to be accountable for appropriate aspects of the work and to help ensure that questions relating to accuracy or integrity are investigated and resolved appropriately.
Authorship Requires All Four Criteria
A substantial contribution alone does not automatically create authorship. Individuals who contribute significantly should also be given a reasonable opportunity to participate in drafting or critical revision, approve the final version, and accept the accountability associated with authorship.
Contributors Should Not Be Prevented From Qualifying Unfairly
Individuals who have made substantial contributions should not be excluded from authorship simply because they were not initially invited to draft the manuscript or approve the final version. Research teams should give qualifying contributors an appropriate opportunity to meet the remaining authorship criteria before deciding that they are ineligible for authorship.
Author Order, First Author, Senior Author & Equal Contribution
TORGJ does not prescribe a universal meaning for each author position because conventions vary across disciplines, institutions, and research traditions. Author order should be agreed transparently by the authors and should reflect the contribution framework appropriate to the work.
Author Order Should Be Agreed Collectively
All authors should have an opportunity to understand and agree to the proposed author order before submission, particularly where author position carries recognised disciplinary or career significance.
Contribution Should Explain Position
Where author order alone does not clearly convey contribution, the manuscript’s CRediT or contributor statement should provide a more transparent account of what each author actually did.
Position Must Not Be Awarded as a Courtesy
Seniority, institutional title, professional rank, supervisory position, political influence, access to resources, or departmental leadership should not determine author position in the absence of qualifying scholarly contribution.
Principles for Determining Author Order
TORGJ expects authors to determine order fairly and transparently within the research team.
Common Author Positions
These terms may carry different meanings across disciplines. They should therefore be interpreted alongside the declared contribution statement rather than treated as fixed titles.
In many fields, the first author has made a major contribution to the study and manuscript preparation. However, first position does not remove the requirement for all authors to satisfy the journal’s authorship criteria.
In some disciplines, the final author position may reflect senior scientific supervision or leadership. This convention is not universal and does not justify authorship without substantive qualifying contribution.
Authors listed between first and final positions should not be treated as secondary contributors by default. Every listed author must satisfy the journal’s authorship requirements.
Author-Order Disputes Should Be Resolved by the Research Team
TORGJ cannot determine the relative scholarly contribution of competing authors on behalf of a research team. Where an unresolved dispute arises, the journal may pause editorial processing and request that the authors resolve the matter through their institution, research office, department, or another appropriate independent mechanism before the manuscript proceeds.
A department head, supervisor, professor, programme director, principal investigator, funder, organisational leader, or other senior individual should not be added to the author list or assigned a prestigious author position solely because of their title or relationship to the project. Authorship must remain grounded in genuine contribution and accountability.
Corresponding Author Responsibilities
The corresponding author serves as the principal communication link between the author group and TORGJ throughout submission, peer review, publication, and relevant post-publication correspondence. This role carries important administrative and communication responsibilities but does not transfer the accountability of all co-authors to one individual.
Submit With Co-Author Knowledge
The corresponding author should ensure that all listed authors are aware of the submission, have agreed to authorship and author order, and have approved the manuscript submitted to TORGJ.
Maintain Reliable Contact
The corresponding author should provide accurate contact details, monitor editorial correspondence, respond within reasonable timeframes, and communicate relevant editorial information to the other authors.
Coordinate Required Disclosures
The corresponding author should coordinate accurate submission of relevant authorship, contribution, funding, conflict-of-interest, ethics, prior-publication, data, and generative-AI declarations where applicable.
Coordinate Author Responses
During revision, the corresponding author should coordinate responses to reviewers and editors and ensure that material changes are communicated to, and appropriately approved by, the author group.
Review Proofs Carefully
The corresponding author should coordinate review of publication proofs, including author names, affiliations, contribution statements, declarations, figures, tables, and other material requiring author verification.
Remain Available After Publication
Where questions arise after publication, the corresponding author should remain reasonably available to facilitate communication with co-authors and respond to legitimate editorial queries concerning the published work.
Before Submission, the Corresponding Author Should Confirm
The corresponding author acts on behalf of the author group in submitting the manuscript and should therefore ensure that key authorship and publication requirements have been addressed.
Responsibility Across the Publication Process
Corresponding-author responsibilities continue beyond the initial upload of the manuscript.
Coordinate manuscript files, author information, declarations, permissions, and required documentation.
Receive editorial correspondence and coordinate complete, professional, and evidence-based responses.
Coordinate final author approval, proof checking, corrections, and publication-related declarations.
Facilitate responses to legitimate questions, corrections, data enquiries, or integrity concerns where appropriate.
The corresponding author coordinates communication with TORGJ, but each listed author remains responsible for meeting the journal’s authorship criteria and for being appropriately accountable for the work. Co-authors should not assume that the corresponding author alone is responsible for the accuracy, integrity, or ethical conduct of the publication.
Contributor Roles & CRediT Taxonomy
TORGJ supports transparent reporting of individual contributions using the CRediT contributor-role framework. Contribution statements help readers understand who performed specific aspects of the research, while authorship itself remains governed by the journal’s authorship criteria.
Describes What Each Person Did
Contributor roles provide a structured description of participation in the research. A person may make an important contribution without necessarily meeting all requirements for authorship and may instead be recognised appropriately as a contributor.
The 14 CRediT Contributor Roles
Authors may hold more than one role, and the same role may be shared by multiple authors. Roles should reflect actual contributions rather than professional title, seniority, or anticipated contribution.
Conceptualization
Development or formulation of the overarching research goals and aims.
Methodology
Development or design of the methodology or creation of research models.
Software
Programming, software development, implementation, testing, or maintenance of code used in the work.
Validation
Verification of the reproducibility or replication of results, experiments, or other research outputs.
Formal Analysis
Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal analytical techniques.
Investigation
Conducting the research and performing experiments, data collection, or evidence-gathering activities.
Resources
Provision of study materials, participants, samples, instruments, computing resources, or other research resources.
Data Curation
Management, annotation, cleaning, organisation, preservation, or maintenance of research data.
Writing – Original Draft
Preparation, creation, or presentation of the initial substantive manuscript.
Writing – Review & Editing
Critical review, commentary, revision, or substantive intellectual editing of the manuscript.
Visualization
Preparation or presentation of figures, visualisations, graphical outputs, or other visual representations.
Supervision
Oversight, mentorship, or leadership responsibility for planning and execution of the research activity.
Project Administration
Management and coordination responsibility for planning and execution of the research project.
Funding Acquisition
Acquisition of financial support that enabled the project leading to the publication.
Include a Clear Author Contribution Statement
TORGJ encourages manuscripts to identify the substantive roles performed by each author. The statement should be agreed by the author group and should accurately represent contributions to the work.
Author A: Conceptualization,
Methodology, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft.
Author B: Formal Analysis,
Data Curation, Visualization, Writing – Review & Editing.
Author C: Supervision,
Methodology, Project Administration,
Writing – Review & Editing.
Principles for Contribution Statements
Contributor information should be specific enough to improve transparency without exaggerating or minimising an individual’s actual role.
Declare only contributions that were genuinely made.
Authors should have an opportunity to review the contribution statement.
Identify meaningful roles rather than relying only on general descriptions.
Contribution statements should remain consistent with the authorship and acknowledgement record.
A CRediT Role Does Not Automatically Confer Authorship
CRediT describes contributions; it does not determine who qualifies as an author. For example, funding acquisition, project administration, supervision, resources, software, investigation, or data curation may represent substantial contributions, but the individual must still satisfy TORGJ’s complete authorship requirements to be listed as an author. Contributors who do not qualify for authorship should receive appropriate non-author recognition.
Group, Consortium & Multicentre Authorship
Large collaborative studies may involve investigators, coordinators, site leads, data collectors, analysts, steering committees, writing groups, and other contributors across multiple institutions or countries. TORGJ supports appropriate collaborative recognition while maintaining clear authorship and accountability standards.
Large Teams May Use Group Authorship
Where appropriate, a recognised consortium, collaborative group, research network, or multicentre study group may appear in the authorship line or contributor record alongside individually named authors.
Group Membership Does Not Automatically Equal Authorship
Participation in a consortium or multicentre study does not by itself establish authorship. Individuals identified as authors should still meet the journal’s authorship requirements.
Non-Author Contributors Should Still Be Credited
Individuals who make meaningful contributions but do not satisfy full authorship criteria may be recognised through named collaborator lists, acknowledgements, site-contributor lists, or structured contributor statements.
A Multicentre Publication May Include Different Levels of Contribution
The contribution model should be agreed early where possible and should distinguish formal authorship from wider study participation.
Possible Collaborative Contribution Categories
These categories are illustrative rather than automatic authorship positions. The actual contribution and accountability of each individual remain decisive.
Individuals responsible for major intellectual, analytical, interpretive, and manuscript-development work.
Individuals with substantive study leadership, design, oversight, and interpretation roles.
Local investigators responsible for substantive site leadership and scholarly contribution.
Individuals coordinating implementation, recruitment, documentation, or multicentre operations.
Individuals who contribute to acquisition of study data or observations.
Contributors involved in methodology, statistical analysis, data interpretation, or analytical validation.
Local team members who contribute materially to study implementation or research delivery.
Technical, administrative, educational, community, or professional contributors recognised according to their actual role.
Data Collection Alone Does Not Automatically Confer Authorship
Site investigators, coordinators, and data collectors may make essential contributions to multicentre research. However, routine recruitment or data collection alone does not automatically satisfy all authorship criteria. Where contributors make substantial additional intellectual contributions and are given the opportunity to participate in manuscript development, final approval, and accountability, they may qualify for authorship. Otherwise, their contributions should be recognised transparently through the collaborator or acknowledgement record.
Where a consortium or group name is used, TORGJ may require identification of one or more individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript, communicate with the journal, and can explain how group members qualify for authorship or contributorship. Group authorship should enhance recognition of collaborative science, not obscure responsibility for the work.
Changes to Authorship Before & After Acceptance
The author list should be accurate at initial submission. Where a legitimate change becomes necessary, TORGJ may consider requests to add or remove an author, change author order, alter equal-contribution designations, or correct authorship information. Such changes require transparency and appropriate agreement among the affected authors.
Agree Authorship Early
Research teams should discuss authorship, author order, contribution roles, and corresponding authorship before submission and revisit those arrangements when substantial contributions change during the project.
Changes Require Explanation
A request to modify the author list during peer review should explain why the change is necessary and how the revised authorship record complies with TORGJ’s authorship criteria.
Greater Scrutiny Applies
Once a manuscript has been accepted, authorship changes should be exceptional and supported by a clear justification. Publication may be paused while the journal verifies the request.
What TORGJ May Require for an Authorship Change
The corresponding author should not alter authorship unilaterally. The journal may require documented agreement and an explanation before approving a change.
Changes Requiring Editorial Notification
Authors should contact the Editorial Office rather than simply altering metadata or manuscript files when any material authorship change is requested.
Unresolved Authorship Disputes May Pause Publication
TORGJ is not ordinarily able to determine which individual deserves authorship or a particular author position where members of a research team disagree about their contributions. If consensus cannot be reached, the journal may pause editorial or production activity and ask the authors to seek resolution through their institution, research-integrity office, department, employer, or another appropriate independent body. Processing may resume once the journal receives a sufficiently clear and documented resolution.
Once an article has been published, the author list should not normally be altered silently. A substantiated authorship correction may require a formal correction notice or another transparent post-publication action linked to the article. Where the proposed change arises from suspected misconduct or remains disputed, TORGJ may seek institutional guidance before amending the published record.
Guest, Gift, Honorary & Ghost Authorship
Authorship must reflect genuine qualifying contribution and accountability. TORGJ does not permit individuals to be added to an author list for prestige, courtesy, influence, hierarchy, or personal advantage, nor should qualifying contributors be deliberately omitted from authorship or contributor recognition.
Prestige Without Qualifying Contribution
Listing a well-known, influential, or respected individual primarily to enhance the perceived credibility, visibility, or acceptance prospects of a manuscript despite that individual not meeting authorship criteria.
Authorship as a Favour or Reward
Awarding authorship because of friendship, reciprocal arrangements, departmental custom, future expectation, access to resources, or another reason unrelated to qualifying scholarly contribution.
Seniority or Position Alone
Listing a supervisor, department head, professor, principal investigator, institutional leader, funder, or other senior individual solely because of title, authority, status, or association with the research environment.
Concealing a Qualifying Contributor
Omitting an individual who made a substantial qualifying contribution, particularly where the omission obscures the true intellectual, commercial, professional, or writing influence behind the manuscript.
Coercive Authorship Is Not Acceptable
An individual should not use professional authority, hierarchy, supervision, control of employment, access to research resources, academic assessment, funding, or other power to pressure a research team into granting authorship or a particular author position.
Situations That May Require Clarification
None of these situations automatically proves inappropriate authorship, but they may justify additional editorial questions where the contribution record is unclear or inconsistent.
What TORGJ May Do When Inappropriate Authorship Is Suspected
The journal may request contributor statements, written explanations, author confirmations, clarification of professional-writing assistance, revised acknowledgements, or other supporting information. Editorial processing may be paused while the issue is assessed. Where a material dispute cannot be resolved by the authors, TORGJ may refer the matter to an appropriate institution or research-integrity body. Confirmed serious authorship misconduct may also be addressed under the Publication Ethics & Malpractice Policy.
The objective is not to minimise author lists or discourage collaborative work. Large teams may legitimately have many authors where each person meets the required criteria. Equally, important non-author contributors deserve appropriate acknowledgement. TORGJ’s concern is whether the published record accurately represents who contributed and who accepts responsibility for the work.
Artificial Intelligence & Authorship
Artificial intelligence and generative-AI tools may support aspects of research or manuscript preparation when used responsibly and in accordance with TORGJ requirements. However, such tools cannot satisfy the responsibilities associated with scholarly authorship and must not be listed as authors.
AI Tools Cannot Be Listed as Authors or Co-Authors
Chatbots, large language models, generative-AI systems, automated writing tools, and other artificial-intelligence technologies must not appear in the author byline. Authorship requires human responsibility, approval, accountability, and the capacity to respond appropriately to questions concerning the integrity of the work.
Why AI Cannot Qualify for Authorship
Authorship involves responsibilities that cannot be assigned to an artificial-intelligence system.
An AI system cannot assume scholarly or ethical responsibility for a publication.
It cannot provide meaningful approval of the final manuscript as a responsible author.
It cannot independently disclose conflicts, interests, funding relationships, or other author declarations.
It cannot independently investigate or resolve questions concerning the integrity of the scholarly record.
Authors Remain Responsible for AI-Assisted Content
Where AI-assisted technologies are used, the human authors remain responsible for reviewing and validating the resulting material before submission.
AI Use Does Not Alter the Human Authorship Standard
Using an AI tool for drafting, editing, summarisation, translation, coding assistance, analysis support, visualisation, or other permitted functions does not create an additional author and does not reduce the responsibilities of the human authors. Individuals listed as authors must independently satisfy TORGJ’s authorship requirements and remain accountable for the submitted and published work.
Author Accountability, Conflicts of Interest & Funding
Authorship carries continuing responsibility for the integrity of the scholarly record. Authors should provide accurate declarations concerning their contributions, relevant competing interests, financial support, institutional relationships, and other circumstances that could reasonably influence the work or its interpretation.
Authors Remain Responsible for Their Contributions
Each author should be able to explain the contribution they made and should take appropriate responsibility for the accuracy, integrity, and reliability of that contribution.
Questions Must Be Addressed Cooperatively
If questions arise about the accuracy or integrity of any aspect of the work, authors should cooperate with legitimate editorial enquiries and help ensure that concerns are investigated and resolved appropriately.
Relevant Interests Must Be Disclosed
Authors should disclose relationships or interests that could reasonably be perceived as influencing the research question, methods, interpretation, presentation, or conclusions.
Author Responsibility Continues Beyond Submission
Approval of a manuscript for submission does not end an author’s responsibilities. Authors should remain reasonably available throughout peer review, production, and after publication.
Funding & Sponsor Transparency
Financial and material support relevant to the work should be disclosed accurately. Where applicable, authors should also explain the funder’s or sponsor’s role in the research and publication process.
Identify grants, organisations, institutions, companies, or other relevant sources of support.
Include grant numbers or other identifying information where applicable.
State whether the sponsor influenced study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, or publication decisions.
Where applicable, authors may explicitly state that the work received no specific external funding.
Authors Share Responsibility for Correcting the Scholarly Record
If an author becomes aware of a material error, omission, misattribution, undisclosed conflict, authorship problem, unreliable finding, or other issue that could affect the published record, the author should communicate with TORGJ promptly. Depending on the nature of the issue, a correction, clarification, expression of concern, retraction, or another appropriate action may be required.
Authors should understand and stand behind their own contributions and should have sufficient confidence in the integrity of the overall work to support publication. An author is not expected to have personally performed every technical component of a multidisciplinary study, but all authors share responsibility for helping resolve legitimate questions concerning the integrity of the published work.
Authorship Disputes, Misconduct & Editorial Action
Authorship disagreements should ideally be prevented through early, transparent discussion of contribution, author order, and responsibilities. Where a dispute or suspected authorship-integrity problem arises, TORGJ may take proportionate editorial steps while recognising that institutions are often better placed to determine disputed individual contributions.
Genuine Disagreement About Contribution
Authors may disagree about whether an individual qualifies for authorship, the appropriate author order, equal-contribution status, or how particular contributions should be represented.
Deliberate Misrepresentation
A concern may become a publication-integrity matter where there is evidence of deliberate gift, guest, coercive, honorary, ghost, fabricated, or otherwise deceptive authorship.
Concerns May Arise After Publication
A post-publication allegation that a legitimate author was omitted, an inappropriate author included, or contributor information falsified may require formal investigation and correction of the scholarly record.
How TORGJ May Respond to an Authorship Concern
The response will depend on the stage of publication, the evidence available, whether the matter is disputed, and whether there are indications of misconduct.
Potential Authorship Misconduct May Include
These concerns may require more than an ordinary author-list correction where they indicate deliberate deception, coercion, or misrepresentation of the scholarly record.
Editorial Action May Extend Beyond the Author List
Where credible evidence suggests serious authorship misconduct, TORGJ may pause or reject a manuscript, request institutional investigation, amend the published authorship record, issue a correction or other notice, or take additional action under the journal’s Publication Ethics & Malpractice Policy. The action should be proportionate to the evidence and the effect of the concern on the scholarly record.
If an authorship dispute is resolved after publication and the published author or contributor record requires amendment, TORGJ should make the change transparently through an appropriate correction or other linked notice. Where the dispute remains unresolved or an institutional investigation is pending, the journal may defer alteration of the author list until sufficiently reliable evidence is available.
International Standards & Related Policies
TORGJ’s authorship framework is informed by recognised international principles of responsible scholarly publishing and should be read alongside the journal’s wider policies on publication ethics, peer review, originality, artificial intelligence, copyright, and editorial conduct.
External Guidance Informing TORGJ Authorship Practice
TORGJ considers established guidance on authorship, contributorship, accountability, publication ethics, and collaborative research when developing and applying its authorship policies.
Authorship Standards May Evolve
TORGJ may periodically review this policy in response to developments in authorship guidance, collaborative research, artificial intelligence, contributorship, publication ethics, indexing requirements, and scholarly publishing practice.
Consult the Published Online Policy
The version displayed on the official TORGJ website should be regarded as the journal’s current published Authorship Policy. Authors should review the current requirements when preparing or revising a submission.
Authorship Means Credit, Contribution & Accountability.
TORGJ supports inclusive and collaborative scholarship, including multicentre and international research, while maintaining that authorship must accurately reflect genuine intellectual contribution and responsibility. Individuals who qualify for authorship should receive appropriate credit; individuals who do not meet full authorship criteria should still be recognised transparently for their contributions.
Authorship & Contributorship Enquiries
For questions about authorship qualification, contributor statements, author-order changes, group authorship, corresponding authorship, authorship disputes, or related integrity concerns, contact the TORGJ Editorial Office.
Confirm Authorship Before You Submit
Ensure that every listed author satisfies the journal’s authorship requirements, all qualifying authors are included, author order has been agreed, contributor roles are accurate, relevant declarations are complete, and all authors have approved the manuscript for submission.