Authorship Policy
Criteria for authorship
Annals of Infectious Diseases and Therapy follows the ICMJE Recommendations. An author must meet all four of the following:
- Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data;
- Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
- Approval of the final version to be published;
- Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Contributors who meet fewer than four criteria — for example, those who provided funding, general supervision, technical assistance, data collection only, or language editing — should be named in the Acknowledgements with their permission, not listed as authors.
Author contribution statement
Every manuscript must include a statement describing each author's contribution. The CRediT taxonomy (Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition) is recommended.
Corresponding author
The corresponding author is responsible for communication with the journal, ensuring that all co-authors have approved the submission and every revision, and that all authorship and disclosure requirements are met. The corresponding author must have an institutional or otherwise verifiable email address.
Changes to authorship
Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be sent to the editor by the corresponding author with (a) the reason for the change and (b) written agreement from all authors, including the one being added or removed. Changes after acceptance are only made in exceptional circumstances and are recorded in a published correction if the article is already online.
Group authorship
Where a consortium or group is listed as an author, the individuals who accept responsibility for the work must be identified, and the members of the group are listed in the Acknowledgements or a supplementary file.
Deceased authors
A deceased contributor who met authorship criteria may be listed with a footnote noting the date of death; a co-author confirms their contribution.
Prohibited practices
- Gift or guest authorship — naming someone who did not contribute.
- Ghost authorship — omitting someone who did contribute substantially, including paid medical writers.
- Sale of authorship — offering or purchasing an author position.
These are treated as misconduct under the Publication Ethics policy.
Artificial intelligence
AI tools cannot be listed as authors. See the AI Use Policy.
Disputes
Authorship disputes are referred to the authors' institution. The journal will not adjudicate who did what, but will pause publication until the dispute is resolved.
Last updated: 29 September 2026