Defining authorship

You can define authorship by examining the extent to which each individual has played a role in the five steps. We suggest that there should be two criteria for deciding who should be considered an author.

• An author is an individual who has participated in at least two of the five research steps. One of these must be the writing and editing of the paper.
• The author should have sufficient involvement in the research that he or she can defend the content of the publication when questions or criticisms are raised.

If the individual concerned cannot be defined as an author using these criteria, but has played some role in the research process, their role should be recognised in the acknowledgment section of the paper.