Authorship and Contributorship Policy:

The term authorship can refer to the creator or originator of an idea (e.g., the author of the theory of relativity) or the individual or individuals who develop and bring to fruition the product that disseminates intellectual or creative works (e.g., the author of a poem or a scholarly article). Authorship conveys significant privileges, responsibilities, and legal rights; in the scholarly arena, it also forms the basis for rewards and career advancement.

1. Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below:
2. Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data;
3. Drafting the paper or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
4. Final approval of the version to be published.
5. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

• Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or collection of data, or general supervision does not justify authorship.
• Each contributor should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content of the manuscript.
• The order of names of the authors is based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript.

1. Once the manuscript is submitted, neither order nor an author should be added/deleted or replaced. The name of MS/M.Phil scholar must be written first followed by his/her supervisor and co-supervisor if the manuscript is extracted from the thesis/dissertation of the scholar. The number of authors for manuscripts depends upon the type of manuscript, its scope, and the number of institutions involved (vide infra).
2. To encourage transparency and to ensure genuine research work, the journal may ask the corresponding author to produce a certificate from the respective university/ (Controller of Examinations) to validate the authorship of the Theses and dissertations from which the paper was extracted.
3. All authors of a research paper are required to sign the letter of submission to ensure that the listed authors have agreed to all of the contents, including the author list and author contribution statements, and have approved the manuscript submission to the journal.
4. The corresponding author should not neglect their responsibility to a journal or their co-authors and will be responsible for the following with respect to data, code, and materials: 

• ensuring that data, materials, and code comply with transparency and reproducibility standards of the field and journal;
• ensuring that original data/materials/code upon which the submission is based are preserved following best practices in the field so that they are retrievable for reanalysis;
• confirming that data/materials/code presentation accurately reflects the original;
• foreseeing and minimizing obstacles to the sharing of data/materials/code described in the work

1. The primary affiliation for each author should be the institution where the majority of their work was done. After publication, the correspondence author will be responsible for the accuracy of the contents published and the journal will immediately be informed if they become aware of any aspects that require correction within one week time of publication.