AUTHORSHIP AND CONTRIBUTORSHIP

Journal of Gender and Millennium Development Studies (JGMDS) recognizes the importance of ethical principles in academic publishing and is committed to maintaining high standards of ethical conduct regarding authorship and contributorship. This policy outlines the rights, responsibilities, and standards for all individuals contributing to research published in JGMDS. To ensure ethical publication practices and uphold the integrity of the research process, JGMDS has established its Authorship and Contributorship Policy based on the following authoritative sources:

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 analysing 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 Acknowledgements

  • Acknowledgement 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 "Acknowledgements" 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 Acknowledgements section. This includes grants, scholarships, and financial support received to carry out the research.

3. Ghost and Guest Authorship

  • Ghost Authorship: Individuals who make substantial contributions to 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 author list (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.

5. Role of Generative AI and AI-Assisted Technologies:
AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Large Language Models, or generative AI) do not meet the requirements for authorship because they cannot take responsibility for the work, hold copyright, or handle conflicts of interest. Therefore, AI tools cannot be listed as an author or co-author. Authors who utilize AI tools in manuscript preparation, code writing, or data analysis must transparently disclose their usage in the Methods, Acknowledgements, or a dedicated AI Statement section, specifying the tool used and its purpose. (Read the JGMDS GenAI Tool Usage Policy).

6. Authorship Disputes:
If an authorship dispute arises before or after publication (e.g., disagreement regarding author inclusion or order), JGMDS follows the guidelines and flowcharts provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The editorial team will suspend the review or publication process until the dispute is resolved mutually by the authors or by their institution.

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 acknowledgement 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