Authorship and Contribution Policy

REMUS adheres to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations for the definition and recognition of scientific authorship. Only those individuals who have substantially contributed to the intellectual content of the manuscript will be considered authors.

To be recognized as an author, all of the following criteria must be met:

  1. Significant participation in:
    1. The conception or design of the study, or
    2. The acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data.
  2. Writing the manuscript in draft form or critically revising it for intellectual content. Final approval of the version to be published.
  3. Commitment to accountability for all aspects of the work, ensuring that any concerns regarding accuracy or integrity are adequately addressed.

Failure to comply with any of these requirements may result in the withdrawal of the author's name.

REMUS accepts a maximum of five (5) authors per manuscript. If a higher number is proposed, a justification letter signed by all authors detailing the specific contribution of each must be included. The Editorial Committee reserves the right to accept or reject such requests.

The order of authorship must be agreed upon by all authors before submission of the manuscript. REMUS is not involved in assigning the order but will request a Declaration of Contributions detailing the specific role of each author (according to the CRediT taxonomy, if applicable).

REMUS does not allow the following practices:

  • Honorary authorship or gift: inclusion of individuals who did not meet the criteria.
  • Ghost authorship: omission of individuals who did contribute substantially.
  • Unjustified change of authors: requests for inclusion or deletion after submission without a documented reason endorsed by all co-authors.

Any request for change (inclusion, deletion, or reordering of authors) must be justified in writing, signed by all authors involved, and accompanied by a new declaration of contributions. Changes will not be accepted once the manuscript has been accepted for publication. 

In line with the most recent ICMJE guidelines (2024), authors must explicitly declare the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as language models (LLM), image generators, or chatbots during manuscript preparation.

  • If AI was used to draft text, this should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments section.
  • If it was used for data analysis, figure generation, or methodological support, this should be explained in the Materials and Methods section.
  • Chatbots (such as ChatGPT) cannot be listed as authors, as they cannot assume intellectual or ethical responsibility for the content.
  • Human authors are fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and proper attribution of all content, including that generated with AI assistance.

Misuse or undisclosed use of AI technologies may be considered a violation of the REMUS editorial ethics policy.