Authorship

Authorship is a critical mechanism for making explicit both the credit and the responsibility associated with published research. In the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Applications and Data Science (JAIADS), credit and responsibility are viewed as inseparable. The guiding principle for all authorship decisions is to present a transparent and honest account of the scientific work that took place.

The criteria for authorship apply to all intellectual products, including print and electronic publications of text, data, and images. Authorship implies a profound responsibility and accountability for the published work. Contributors who have made substantive intellectual contributions are given credit as authors, and by accepting this credit, they inherently understand their role in taking full responsibility for the integrity of the published content.

Because the mere list of authors does not fully communicate what specific contributions qualified an individual to be an author, editors are strongly encouraged to develop and implement a contributorship policy that identifies who is responsible for the work as a whole. While such policies remove much of the ambiguity surrounding contributions, they leave unresolved the question of the exact quantity and quality of contribution that qualifies an individual for authorship. The following guidelines serve to clarify these expectations for JAIADS.

Criteria for Authorship

According to JAIADS guidelines, everyone who has made a substantial intellectual contribution to the study upon which the article is based should be listed as an author. This includes significant contributions to the research question, design, analysis, interpretation, and the written description of the study.

Conversely, only individuals who have made these substantial intellectual contributions should be authors. The following activities do not, in themselves, justify authorship, although these contributions may be properly acknowledged in the manuscript:

Performing routine technical services.
Translating text.
Identifying patients or subjects for the study.
Supplying standard materials.
Providing funding or general administrative oversight over the facilities where the work was conducted.

The Guarantor:

One author (often referred to as the "guarantor") must take primary responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole. Often this is the corresponding author-the individual who submits the manuscript and coordinates responses during peer review-but other authors can assume this role.

Approval and Familiarity:

All authors must explicitly approve the final version of the manuscript. While it is preferable that all authors be highly familiar with all aspects of the work, JAIADS recognizes that modern AI research is often conducted in multidisciplinary teams with complementary expertise. Therefore, every author may not be equally familiar with every technical aspect of the work. Some authors' contributions may be limited to specific, highly specialized domains of the project.

Number of Authors

JAIADS editors do not arbitrarily limit the number of authors on a manuscript. There are legitimate, scientific reasons for multiple authors in complex research endeavors, such as multi-center randomized controlled trials or large-scale AI model training efforts.

In situations involving massive collaboration:

A subset of authors may be listed in the primary byline, accompanied by a notation that they have prepared the manuscript on behalf of all contributors, who are then listed in an appendix.
Alternatively, a "corporate" or "Group" name representing all authors in a named study may be listed, provided that at least one investigator takes responsibility for the work as a whole.

In all cases, all individuals listed as authors must meet the criteria for authorship. If editors believe the number of authors is unusually large relative to the scope and complexity of the work, they reserve the right to ask for a detailed description of each author's specific contributions. If some individuals do not meet the authorship criteria, editors can require their names to be removed as a condition of publication.

Order of Authorship

The authors themselves must collectively decide the order in which they are listed on the article. No one else knows their respective contributions and internal agreements as well as the authors do. Readers cannot and should not assume the meaning of the order of authorship unless the specific approach to assigning the order has been explicitly described by the authors within the manuscript.

Authorship Disputes

Disputes regarding authorship (including the inclusion, exclusion, or order of authors) are best settled at the local, institutional level before the journal reviews the manuscript. However, at their discretion, JAIADS editors may become involved in attempting to resolve authorship disputes.

Any changes in authorship-at any stage of manuscript review, revision, or after acceptance-must be accompanied by a written request and a signed explanation from all of the original authors.

Conflict Of Interest (COI)

Public trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles depend heavily on how transparently conflicts of interest are handled during the planning, implementation, writing, peer review, editing, and publication phases.

Financial relationships (such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership or options, honoraria, patents, and paid expert testimony) are the most easily identifiable conflicts of interest and are the most likely to undermine the credibility of the journal and the authors. However, conflicts can also occur for other reasons, such as personal relationships, academic rivalries, or deeply held intellectual beliefs.

All participants in the peer-review and publication process must consider their conflicts of interest and must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as potential conflicts.

Responsibilities on Conflicts of Interest:

Authors: When submitting a manuscript, authors are strictly responsible for disclosing all financial and personal relationships that might bias or be seen to bias their work. Authors must provide evidence of whether impending conflicts do or do not exist by signing a conflict of interest statement included in the main manuscript.
Reviewers: Reviewers will be asked at the time of invitation if they have conflicts of interest that could complicate their review. Reviewers must disclose any conflicts that could bias their opinions and must recuse themselves from reviewing specific manuscripts if a significant potential for bias exists. Reviewers must not use knowledge of the unpublished work to further their own interests.
Editors: Editors who make final decisions about manuscripts will recuse themselves from editorial decisions if they have conflicts of interest related to the articles under consideration. Other editorial staff members participating in the decision process must provide current descriptions of their financial interests and recuse themselves from decisions where a conflict exists.

Reporting Conflicts of Interest

Articles published in JAIADS must be accompanied by statements (or supporting documents, if needed) explicitly declaring:

The authors' conflicts of interest.
The sources of support for the work, including sponsor names and explanations of the sponsors' roles (if any) in the study design; collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; writing of the report; and the decision to submit the report for publication. If the supporting source had no such involvement, a statement declaring this must be included.
Whether the authors had access to the study data, including an explanation of the nature and extent of that access (and whether access is ongoing).

To support these statements, editors may request that authors of a study sponsored by a funder with a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome sign a strong declaration, such as: "I had full access to all of the data in this study and I take complete responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis."

Copyright Policy and User License Agreement

JAIADS ensures authors are appreciated and appropriately cited for their work. All articles are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC-BY-NC-4.0), enabling the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of an article in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited.

Through the JAIADS archives, the journal provides immediate, permanent, and free open access to all published material for everyone to read and download, in strict accordance with the CC-BY-NC-4.0 user license agreement.