Authorship
Authorship is based on the following four criteria:
In addition to being accountable for the concluded parts of the work, an author is able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.
All those designated as authors meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria are identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged -see below. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended to be used as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship, who otherwise fulfil the authorship criteria, by denying them the opportunity to fulfil criterions 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting and final approval of the manuscript.
The individuals who conduct the work are responsible for identifying those who fulfil these criteria; ideally this should be done when planning the work, making appropriate modifications as the work progresses. We encourage collaboration and co-authorship between research colleagues. But it is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal, to determine that all people named as authors fulfil all four criteria; it is not the role of journal editors to determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship or to arbitrate authorship conflicts. If agreement cannot be reached about who qualifies for authorship, the institution/s where the work was performed, not the journal editor, is asked to investigate. The criteria used to determine the order in which authors are listed on the byline may vary, and are to be decided collectively by the group of authors and not by editors. If authors request the deletion or addition of an author after the submission or publication of a manuscript, the editor of Pflege & Gesellschaft will obtain a declaration and a signed declaration of consent for the requested change from all listed authors and from the author to be deleted or added.
The corresponding author is the one individual who takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer-review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosures of relationships and activities are properly completed and reported, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors. The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer-review process in order to respond to editorial queries in a timely way, and should be available after publication to respond to critiques of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for data or additional information, should questions about the paper arise after publication. Although the corresponding author has primary responsibility for correspondence with the journal, the editorial office of Pflege & Gesellschaft sends copies of all correspondence to all listed authors in accordance with the ICMJE recommendations.
When a large multi-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript, and they should be able to take public responsibility for the work and should have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other authors in the group. They will also be expected to complete disclosure forms as individuals.
Some large multi-author groups designate authorship by a group name, with or without the names of individuals. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should specify the group name if one exists, and clearly identify the group members who can take credit and responsibility for the work as authors. The byline of the article identifies who is directly responsible for the manuscript,
Non-Author Contributors
Contributors who meet fewer than all four of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship may be acknowledged individually or together as a group and their contributions should be specified (e.g., "served as scientific advisors," "critically reviewed the study proposal," "collected data," "provided and cared for study patients," "participated in writing or technical editing of the manuscript").
Because acknowledgment may imply endorsement by acknowledged individuals of a study’s data and conclusions, the corresponding author must obtain from all acknowledged individuals their written permission to be acknowledged.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Assisted Technology
At submission, the journal requires authors to disclose whether they used artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models [LLMs], chatbots, or image creators) in the production of submitted work. Authors who use such technology have to describe, in both the cover letter to the editor and the submitted work, how they used it. Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) are not to be listed as authors because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work, and these responsibilities are required for authorship (see above). Therefore, humans are responsible for any submitted material that includes the use of AI-assisted technologies. Authors have to carefully review and edit the result because AI can generate authoritative-sounding output that can be incorrect, incomplete, or biased. Authors should not list AI and AI-assisted technologies as an author or co-author, nor cite AI as an author. Authors must be able to assert that there is no plagiarism in their paper, including in text and images produced by the AI. Humans must ensure there is appropriate attribution of all quoted material, including full citations.