Each person listed as an author is expected to have participated in the study to a significant extent. To qualify as a contributing author, one must meet all of the following criteria (The criteria of authorship are defined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)):

1.Substantial contributions 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.

All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged, i.e. noted in the Acknowledgments section of the manuscript. 

The individuals who conduct the work are responsible for identifying who meets these criteria and ideally should do so when planning the work, making modifications as appropriate as the work progresses. It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal to which the work is submitted, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria. Each author must sign a copy of the Authorship Responsibility form and submit it at the time of manuscript submission. DOWNLOAD The Authorship Responsibility form

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, and should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely way.