Authorship & Contributor Roles (CRediT) Policy

The Health and Research Journal promotes transparency and accountability in authorship and contributions.

Authorship criteria

Authorship should reflect substantial scholarly contributions. All authors should:

• have made a meaningful contribution to the work (e.g., to the study concept/design, data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation),

• have participated in drafting the manuscript or revising it critically,

• have approved the final version, and

• agree to be accountable for the work and its integrity.

Individuals who contributed but do not meet authorship criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgements (with their permission).

Corresponding author responsibilities

The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that:

• all eligible contributors are appropriately included as authors,

• all authors have approved the final manuscript and submission, and

• required statements (ethics approval, conflicts of interest, funding, data availability where applicable) are complete and accurate.

Contributor roles (CRediT)

Authors are encouraged to describe individual contributions using the CRediT taxonomy (e.g., Conceptualization, Methodology, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Writing—Original Draft, Writing—Review & Editing, Supervision, Project Administration, Funding Acquisition). The journal may publish contributor role statements with the article.

Authors are encouraged to include a Contributor Roles statement in the manuscript at submission.

Changes to authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission must be justified in writing and must be approved by all authors. The journal may request supporting documentation and may pause review until the matter is resolved.

If authors cannot reach agreement, the journal may decline to consider the manuscript further until the dispute is resolved by the authors’ institution(s) or according to applicable procedures.

Guest/ghost authorship and acknowledgements

Guest, gift, or ghost authorship is not permitted. All substantial contributions should be appropriately credited, either through authorship or acknowledgements.

Use of AI-assisted tools

The use of AI-assisted tools is permitted where it supports the research and writing process, provided that:

• authors remain fully responsible for the accuracy, originality, and integrity of the work,

• any substantial use of AI tools in writing, analysis, or image generation is transparent and disclosed (e.g., in the Methods, Acknowledgements, or a dedicated disclosure statement), and

• AI tools cannot be listed as authors.