AUTHORSHIP AND CONTRIBUTORSHIP

Journal of Gender and Millennium Development Studies (JGMDS) adheres to the guidelines set forth by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE): Authorship and Contributorship and Elsevier: CRediT author statement for authorship and contributor responsibilities. This policy ensures ethical publication practices and upholds the integrity of the research process.

A. Authorship

Authorship in the Journal of Gender and Millennium Development Studies (JGMDS) is reserved for individuals who have made substantial intellectual contributions to the research and writing process. To qualify, contributors must be involved in designing the study or analyzing the data, participate in drafting or critically revising the manuscript, approve the final version, and accept responsibility for the work’s integrity. The order of authors should reflect each contributor’s actual involvement and must be agreed upon by all authors prior to submission. The corresponding author is responsible for handling communication with the journal and ensuring that all co-authors have reviewed and approved the submitted manuscript. JGMDS strictly prohibits guest authorship (crediting individuals who did not contribute) and ghost authorship (omitting those who did). Any authorship changes after submission must be reported to the editorial office and must have the written consent of all listed authors.

1. General Principles of Authorship

• Eligibility for Authorship: Authorship should be limited to those who have made significant contributions to the research process. This includes contributions to:
  • The conception and design of the research.
  • The acquisition of data.
  • The analysis and interpretation of data.
  • Drafting or critically revising the manuscript for intellectual content.
  • Final approval of the version to be published.
  • Accountability for all aspects of the research, ensuring that questions about the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
• Order of Authors: The order of authorship should reflect the extent of each contributor's involvement in the research and writing process. The order should be agreed upon by all co-authors before submission, with the first author being the individual who has made the most significant contribution, and the corresponding author managing the submission and communications with the journal.
• Corresponding Author: The corresponding author is the individual responsible for managing the manuscript submission process, including responding to reviewers’ comments, submitting the revised manuscript, and ensuring that all co-authors are in agreement with the manuscript content.

2. Contributor Acknowledgments

• Acknowledgment of Non-Authors: Individuals who have made significant contributions to the research but do not meet the criteria for authorship should be acknowledged in the "Acknowledgments" section of the manuscript. These may include those who provided technical assistance, funding, or expert advice.
• Funding Sources: All funding sources should be disclosed in the Acknowledgments section. This includes grants, scholarships, and financial support received to carry out the research.

3. Ghost and Guest Authorship

• Ghost Authorship: Ghost authorship refers to individuals who have made substantial contributions to the research but are not listed as authors. This practice is considered unethical, and ghost authors should be properly acknowledged.
• Guest Authorship: Guest authorship refers to individuals who are listed as authors but have not made substantial contributions to the work. Guest authorship is also unethical, and only those who meet the criteria for authorship should be included.

4. Changes to Authorship

• Addition or Removal of Authors: Any changes to the list of authors (e.g., adding or removing authors) after manuscript submission must be made in consultation with all authors and require their written agreement. These changes should be communicated to the journal and approved by the editorial team before publication.
• Author Responsibilities: All authors are collectively responsible for the manuscript content. Any author who has not contributed sufficiently to the work should not be listed as an author.

B. Contributorship

To ensure transparency in research collaboration, the Journal of Gender and Millennium Development Studies (JGMDS) adopts the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to clearly define and acknowledge each contributor’s specific role in the research and publication process. CRediT provides a standardized framework to describe individual contributions, supporting accountability and proper recognition for all contributors.

CRediT statements should be provided during the submission process and will appear above the acknowledgment section of the published paper as shown further below (https://www.elsevier.com/credit-author-statement):

Term	Definition
Conceptualization	Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims
Methodology	Development or design of methodology; creation of models
Software	Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components
Validation	Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs
Formal analysis	Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data
Investigation	Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection
Resources	Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools
Data Curation	Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse
Writing - Original Draft	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation)
Writing - Review & Editing	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre-or postpublication stages
Visualization	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation
Supervision	Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team
Project administration	Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution
Funding acquisition	Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication