Ethical considerations about authorship in Revista Española de Podología
Journal should have clear and transparent policies about authorship and when a person should be considered author of a manuscript of the journal. At the same time, the journal should have a clear policy about the process to follow in cases of dispute that can appear about authorship of manuscripts during the publication process or when the manuscript has been already published.
Revista Española de Podología adopts authorship criteria recommendations proposed by the ICMJE (International Committe of Medical Journal Editors) based on the following four criteria: 1) Substantial contribution to the conception or design of the work or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; 2) Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) Final approval of the version to be published; 4) Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Acknowledgements section of the manuscript should be used to express contributions that do not meet de criteria specified above such us economic support, general coordination of research in an institution or some other type of data acquisition.
To improve authorship process and to increase transparency, Revista Española de Podología requires to specify relative contribution of authors in the manuscript subjected to publication in the sections of original papers, reviews, updates and clinical cases/notes. This aspect was exposed in an editorial letter published in the first number of 2022. Authors contributions used in the journal are based in the CRediT taxonomy that defines 14 posible roles of specific contributions for authors to a paper (https://casrai.org/credit/) and is actually the most accepted taxonomy in the international scientific community. However, in order to facilitate the process, the journal has summarized possible contributions of the authors in the following five categories: 1) Conception and design of the paper; 2) Data collection; 3) Analysis and interpretation of the results; 4) Creation, drafting and initial preparation of the manuscript; 5) Final review and acceptance of the manuscript. One author can appear in multiple roles and each author should appear in at least one of the roles. All authors should appear in the last category (final review and acceptance of the manuscript). Relative contribution of authors needs to be specify during the manuscript submission process.
Disputes about authorship can appear during the review of the manuscript or even once the paper has been published. The journal and the editors are barely in a good position to arbitrate and to make a fair judgement in a dispute of authorship of a paper. In those cases, Revista Española de Podología will follow recommendations and flow diagrams of COPE to resolve the conflict. If the dispute occurs in a manuscript under review, the review process will be stopped until authorship dispute is resolved.