Authorship and Contributorship

Prominent institutions around the globe, such as ANPAD and ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors), recommend that authorship be based on the following four criteria:

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 in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors. We include only one corresponding author per article. Any further contribution details (e.g., equal contribution) must be included in the contributors or acknowledgment sections at the end of the article.

The RAC requires that all those designated as authors should meet all four ICMJE criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. We recognize only natural persons as authors. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterions #2 or #3 above. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval 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. The corresponding author takes primary responsibility for communication with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process, and typically ensures that all the journal’s administrative requirements, such as providing details of authorship, ethics committee approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and gathering conflict of interest forms and statements, are properly completed, although these duties may be delegated to one or more co-authors. At RAC we want authors to assure us that all authors included in a paper fulfill the criteria of authorship. In addition, we want assurance that there is no one else who fulfills the criteria but has not been included as an author. When we encounter disagreements among authors we follow guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which RAC is a member of, and subscribes to the principles of — see here and here.

ANPAD's Handbook of Best Practices in Scientific Publication adds to RAC's policy of authorship criteria that:

• Editorial process should be shared between researchers and teachers belonging to various institutions, in order to avoid the owner-journal, that is, produced mainly by people linked to a specific institution;

• Each year, the fraction of articles originating from a particular institution (that is, with at least one author, teacher, or student linked to it) must not exceed 15% of the total articles published;

• In the same year, more than one author's paper should not be published, regardless of the author's position in the text.

 

Funding

When submitting articles for the Journal of Contemporary Administration (Revista de Administração Contemporânea, RAC), authors must inform if there was funding for the research. In the case of a research result with funding, quote the funding agency and the process number only in the ScholarOne system. In the event the article is approved for publication, this information will be included by the editorial team in the final version for publication (PDF).

 

Policy for Conflict of Interest

Submissions for the Journal of Contemporary Administration (Revista de Administração Contemporânea, RAC) are assigned to editors in an effort to minimize potential conflicts of interest. The following relationships between editors and authors are considered conflicts and are avoided:

  • Current colleagues, OR
  • Recent colleagues, OR
  • Recent co-authors, OR
  • Doctoral students for which editor served as committee chair.

After papers are assigned, associate editors are required to inform the editor-in-chief of any conflicts not included in the list above. In the event that none of the editors satisfy all of the conflict screens, associate editors who are least conflicted will be assigned to the manuscript. RAC’s submissions are also assigned to reviewers to minimize conflicts of interest. After papers are assigned, reviewers are asked to inform the editor of any conflicts that may exist.

ANPAD's Handbook of Best Practices in Scientific Publication imposes additional conditions, which RAC assigns consent: Papers authored by the Editor and Associate Editors should not be published, even if this authorship is shared with other authors, and not even by leaders of the maintainers of the journal, except in special cases. When this is the case, this specificity should be cited and justified in the Editorial of the issue, and it is also necessary to explicitly indicate a special editor for that specific article, evidently maintaining the anonymity of the authors and evaluators.