Authorship and Contributorship Policy

Regeneration, Reconstruction & Restoration (Triple R) Journal adheres strictly to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines regarding authorship, contributorship, and AI-assisted scholarship.

1- Criteria for Authorship

An “author” is defined as an individual who has made substantive intellectual contributions to the study. According to the ICMJE guidelines, authorship credit requires meeting “all four” of the following criteria:

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.

Note: Acquisition of funding, data collection alone, technical support, language editing, or general supervision of the research group does not justify authorship. Contributors who do not satisfy all four criteria must be acknowledged in the “Using artificial intelligence (AI)” section.

2- Acknowledgments and Support

Contributors who do not qualify for authorship must be recognized in the Acknowledgments section with a description of their specific contribution.

-Clearance: The corresponding author must obtain written permission from all individuals named in the Acknowledgments section prior to submission.

Financial and Material Support: All sources of grants, institutional funding, corporate support, direct investigator payments, and consultancies must be fully disclosed in this section.

Writing Assistance: The involvement of professional scientific/medical writers, language editors, or editorial services must be declared along with their funding source, adhering to EMWA (European Medical Writers Association) standards.

3- Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative Technologies

In accordance with ethical publishing standards, AI tools and Large Language Models (LLMs) cannot be listed as authors, as they cannot take accountability or grant final approval.

If AI-assisted technologies are used in any stage of manuscript preparation (e.g., data analysis, code generation, translation, or drafting):

1. Mandatory Disclosure: Authors must clearly describe the use of AI in the “Using artificial intelligence (AI)” section, detailing:

   -The specific AI tool, model, and version used.

   -The exact purpose/phase of the research or writing process.

   -Key prompts used (where applicable).

   -How the generated output was evaluated, verified, and integrated by the authors.

2. Formal Statement: Authors must include the following statement:

   “We acknowledge that [portions of the text / data analysis / code] in this work were generated with the assistance of [AI tool/model name, version, and developer]. The authors have thoroughly reviewed, verified, and taken full responsibility for the content and integrity of the published work.“

4- Author Identification and Bibliographic Consistency

To maintain accurate scholarly records and ensure seamless indexing in bibliographic databases (e.g., PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science):

-Consistency: Authors must ensure their names, initials, and institutional affiliations are formatted consistently with their previously published records.

-Verification: The corresponding author must review and verify the automatically generated author metadata during the submission process.

-ORCID: The inclusion of persistent digital identifiers (ORCID iDs) is strongly recommended for all contributing authors.

5- Authorship Changes and Disputes

Any requested modification to the author list (including adding, removing, or reordering authors) after initial manuscript submission must follow a formal protocol:

Pre-Publication Changes:

-The corresponding author must provide a written justification for the change to the Editor-in-Chief.

-In compliance with COPE guidelines, written confirmation (via direct email/signed form) is mandatory from all authors, including any author being added or removed.

-Authorship Disputes: The journal's editorial team will not mediate or arbitrate authorship disputes. If co-authors cannot reach a consensus, the issue must be resolved by their host institution(s). The manuscript process will be placed on hold until an official institutional resolution is provided.

-Post-Publication Changes: Authorship changes requested after publication can only be executed through the publication of a formal **Correction / Erratum**, subject to the same approval criteria.