What Is an Authors Declaration Statement?

An author’s declaration statement addresses a variety of logistical and ethical concerns, which are detailed below. This document is a necessary aspect during the submission of a manuscript, articles, journals, or other written works. Under the title declarations, ethics approval, and blank agreement to participate, all manuscripts must include the following components. Manuscripts describing research using human subjects, data, or materials. Include a declaration about ethical approval and consent as well. A template or author declaration sample is readily available for you to use as a reference as you write your author declaration statement.

Conflict of Interest

An author has a conflict of interest for a specific manuscript when they have links to activities that potentially adversely influence their judgment, whether or not judgment is influenced. The most serious conflicts of interest are frequently those involving financial links with industry. Authors are responsible for recognizing and reporting financial and other conflicts of interest that may prejudice their work before submitting a paper. They should recognize all financial backing for the work, as well as any other financial or personal ties to the work, in the text. Alternatively, a declaration of research interest statement for a journal may not be necessarily stated since it is a given.

The Responsibilities of Authors

Before you proceed to credit the author statement, you must first know what are the entailed responsibilities of each of these authors who are signing up to be part of the blank statement. It may be tempting to gloss or skip over these details but the main thing you have to remember is that each of these responsibilities is important to uphold the unspoken agreement between the authors. Although if you are an individual writer, then the contents of the list may not apply to you. Then again, if you have future works involving other authors, you may still find value in knowing the Information below.

Confidentiality: Confidentiality is the cornerstone of the author-editor relationship. All correspondence between authors and the journal should be kept confidential. Authors should establish a single point of contact for all article communication during peer review and, if approved, the publication process. The journal’s protocols for communication with external peer reviewers should be followed, which may change depending on whether the journal uses masked or non-masked peer review and prepublication embargoes.Originality: The authors should offer a statement attesting to the study’s originality before it is considered for publication. Because many journals have limited space, editors may assign low attention to research that does not promote the scientific effort, regardless of scientific rigor and validity. Some journals may require authors to submit copies of reports from previous research, such as papers, manuscripts, and abstracts, that are relevant to the study in question.Disclosures: When it comes to journal submission criteria, authors should be open and honest. This includes information on the content’s originality, a description of an author’s real contribution to the study, as well as audited financial statement and conflict of interest disclosures. The regulatory status of any medications or devices utilized in the study may also be required by some publications. All relevant disclosures should be included with an accepted paper, according to the authors.Copyright Assignment: In medical publications, writers are frequently required to give a copyright to the journal that will publish their work. A legal instrument in which the writers give certain rights to the publisher is known as a copyright assignment. The content must be original and not otherwise protected by copyright. Authors should make sure that the study they are considering is unique and free of plagiarism. Authors must avoid duplicate publishing. Some journal editors may be hesitant to consider submissions that contain content that the authors have already published elsewhere, as this might constitute a copyright violation and signal that the work has been published elsewhere.Permissions: Authors frequently want to repurpose previously published photographs and other protected content. To reproduce any protected content and provide correct acknowledgment, the author should follow journal or publisher requirements. If the author’s copyright was ever transferred to a publisher or journal, this includes the author’s work. Authors should contact the original material’s journal or publisher, or examine the permissions information available on many of their websites. Permission should be given in writing, and the writers should save the paperwork. This notice may also be requested by the editor.Multiple Submissions: It is not accepted in the biomedical sciences for authors to submit a research report to several publications at the same time, even a peer-reviewed paper that has not been formally rejected by the original journal to which it was submitted. Authors who do not adhere to these criteria may have their papers rejected as a policy violation. This method may constitute copyright infringement. If writers desire to submit their work to another journal while it is being considered by another journal, they must send a written communication to the editor of the journal where it is being considered, requesting that their study be removed from further consideration.Data Sharing: Authors should be aware of their funding agencies’ data-sharing responsibilities. Data sharing is the practice of making data used for academic study available to other investigators. The purpose of this strategy is to make underlying data sets more reproducible and accessible. The authors should examine where they will send their data and the publications to which they may wish to submit their study at the start of the project, as well as the data-sharing rules for each journal.

Different Authorship Issues

Not all the time would various authors’ collaboration go well. In certain cases, there may be difficulties in agreeing or there are situations beyond one’s control. Either author prefers to have the sole authorship or thoroughly come to an agreement with the manuscript.

Guest Authorship: Guest authorship has been characterized as authorship based purely on the anticipation that including a certain name will boost the study’s prospects of publication or elevate the publication’s perceived status. Since the guest author makes no visible contributions to the work, they do not fulfill any of the authorship requirements.Honorary or Gift Authorship: Authorship based simply on a tenuous relationship with a study has been classified as honorary or gift authorship. Authorship based on one’s position as the director of a department where the study was conducted is a good example.Ghost Authorship: Ghost authors may aid with research, data analysis, and paper writing, but they are not given credit in the written material. Undisclosed contributors who work for pharmaceutical or device firms, medical writers, marketing and public relations writers, and junior staff writing for elected or appointed authorities are all examples of ghost authors. Anyone who makes a significant contribution to a book should be listed in the author byline or the acknowledgments, along with their institutional affiliations, if applicable.Authorship for Sale: Non-authors have been accused of attempting to buy authorship from a study’s author, usually after the article has been asked for revision or conditionally approved. During the review process, editors should be notified of changes to the author’s byline. If a change is requested, the manuscript’s corresponding author should explain the reason, and any author changes should be approved by all authors on the publication.Anonymous Authorship: It is not permissible to use pseudonyms or publish scientific studies anonymously since authorship should be visible and needs public responsibility. A journal editor may choose to publish anonymous information in exceptional circumstances, such as when the author can make a plausible claim that attaching his or her identity to the document would cause substantial hardship such as it posing a danger to personal safety or could lead to a loss of work.Group Authorship: When a group of researchers cooperated on a project, such as a multicenter study, a consensus paper, or an expert panel, group authorship may be suitable. Because mentioning all collaborators is incorrect and difficult because some would not match a journal’s authorship standards, and byline space may prevent such a listing, writers must consider how to transmit credit and responsibility for the material.Deceased or Incapacitated Authors: Co-authors should get disclosure and copyright notice documents from a family or legal proxy if a coauthor dies or becomes incompetent during the writing, submission, or peer-review process.

How to Write an Authors Declaration Statement

Since this article has defined what an author’s declaration statement is and has defined the author’s declare no conflict of interest, then you are ready to proceed to write your statement. As an author, it is not easy to concisely store all the information relevant to the responsibilities of the involved co-authors of the written document in one clear statement. So with this guide, you will be able to know how to go about filling the statement. If you prefer to see the structure for yourself, proceed to view the author’s declaration statement sample provided.

Step 1: State Corresponding Author

The matching author’s name, address, and valid email address. The corresponding author is the person in charge of the article as it progresses through the submission procedure at the journal. All contact relevant to the manuscript will be forwarded to this individual via the system, thus they must be registered with the editorial manager. The corresponding author is responsible for any manuscript amendments and is the sole author who can see the document’s progress as it progresses from one stage to the next. They are the solely authorized contact with the editorial office and are responsible for communicating with the other writers about progress, modifications, and final approval of the proofs.

Step 2: Clarify Redundancies

The publication of a paper that considerably overlaps with one that has previously been published is known as redundant or duplicate publication. Authors should expect editorial action if redundant or duplicate publishing is attempted or happens without prior notification to the editor. When submitting a paper, the author should always inform the editor of all previous submissions and articles that might be considered redundant or duplicate publishing of the same or very comparable work. If the work involves topics that have already been covered in a prior article, the author should notify the pdf editor.

Step 3: List out Authorship

The author declaration must be signed by all of the writers. All writers should meet the qualifications for authorship, and those who do should be listed. Each author should have contributed enough to the work to be able to assume public responsibility for suitable sections of it. From conception to publication, the corresponding author should be responsible for the integrity of the work as a whole. Only substantial contributions to idea and design, data collecting, data analysis, and interpretation, drafting the article or critically editing it for essential intellectual content, and final approval of the version to be published should be given authorship credit.

Step 4: Define Ethical Issues

This step may not apply to you depending on the contents of your article, manuscript, or writing. But if it does, then be sure to include it. When publishing animal studies, authors should state if the institution’s or a national research council’s guide for the care and use of laboratory animals, or any national law on the subject, was followed. When reporting on studies involving human beings, writers should state whether the techniques used complied with the ethical criteria of the relevant committee on human experimentation, either institutional or regional. This implies that the writers must say unequivocally that all applicable laws in their own country were obeyed.

Step 5: Include Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not fit the authorship criterion, such as someone who gave just technical aid, or writing assistance, or a department chair who provided only general support, should be acknowledged. The acknowledgments should include acknowledging financial and material help.

Step 6: Create an Impact Statement

Authors are urged to include a comment in their cover letter expressing their appreciation for the significance and influence of their work. This should not be a speculative remark about clinical potential, but rather a detailed declaration of the underlying science. At the end of the abstract, a succinct summary of this influence should be added.

FAQs

What is the procedure for making a declaration?

If your article is being submitted to a publication that asks you to make a declaration of conflicting interests, then do add one at the end of your manuscript. This can be placed after the acknowledgments and before the references, under the specific heading. If no declaration is made, then it would immediately be stated as you having no declaration or be stated that you as the author have declared no existing conflict of interest.

Why does authorship matter?

Authorship has a lot of weight in the academic, social, and economical worlds. Authorship also entails duty and accountability for work that has been published. The following suggestions are intended to ensure that contributors who have made significant intellectual contributions to a paper are given authorship credit, as well as that contributors who are given authorship credit understand their role in accepting responsibility and accountability for what is published.

What about contributors who aren’t authors?

Contributors who do not match all four of the requirements for authorship should be recognized rather than identified as authors. Acquisition of funds, general supervision of a research group, or general administrative support are examples of actions that do not qualify a contributor for authorship on their own. Writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading are examples of actions that do not qualify a contributor for authorship on their own.

During the manuscript submission, editors and publishers will look for an author’s declaration statement. And if you cannot provide the said document, your journal article will face a delay in its journal submission. Moreover, an author’s declaration statement can also help you to settle the identities of who should be placed in the statement itself and who should only be acknowledged. Either way, it is an important tool that goes along with written works.