Journal of Pakistan Psychiatric Society (JPPS) follows the ICMJE definition of authorship (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf), and expects that any person listed as an author in the article submitted to this journal fulfill the criteria listed and that no author(s) who would be considered an author have been omitted. In case of a dispute or change request, during the publishing process, this journal will be guided by the relevant COPE flowchart in deciding the appropriate action(s).

Eligibility for authorship should be based on these four criteria (ICMJE recommendations):

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
3. Final approval of the version to be published; and
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

NOTE: all authors of a manuscript have a shared duty for maintaining the integrity of the work, regardless of their individual contributions.

A maximum of six authors are allowed in a single-institution or discipline study. However, for multi-institution or discipline and international research collaboration, the Editorial Board will decide on the basis of individual cases.

JPPS discourages gift authorship(s). Mere supervision, collection of data, statistical analysis and language correction do not qualify as authorship rights. It is preferable that all authors belong to the same department of an institute, except for multi-centre and multi-specialty studies.

The corresponding author is responsible for communicating with the co-authors. Anyone who does not meet the criteria should be listed in the Acknowledgement section with their permission. The corresponding author's precise responsibilities include:

• Manuscript correction and proofreading. Handling the revisions and re-submission of revised manuscripts up to the acceptance of the manuscripts.
• Agreeing to and signing the Author Publishing Agreement on behalf of relevant co-authors and/or arranging for any third-party copyright owners’ signature.
• Acting on behalf of all co-authors in responding to queries from all sources post-publication, including questions relating to publishing ethics, reuse of content, or the availability of data, materials, resources, etc.

Requests to change the corresponding author after submission will be subject to scrutiny and a formal process, as with any authorship change. This applies to both pre- and post-publication of the article.

A final list of authors MUST be provided with their contact details, such as workplace, telephone/cell numbers, and e-mail addresses on the manuscript at the time of submission, ensuring the correct sequence of the names of authors, which will not be considered for any addition, deletion or rearrangement after final submission of the manuscript.