Authorship Policy

1. Authorship Criteria
- Authorship credit should be based only on substantial contributions to each of the three components mentioned below: 

• Concept and design of study or acquisition of data or analysis and interpretation of data.
• Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and
• Final approval of the version to be published.

- Participation solely in the acquisition of funding or the collection of data does not justify authorship.
- General supervision of the research group is not sufficient for 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 naming the contributors should be based on the relative contribution of the contributor towards the study and writing the manuscript.
- Once submitted the order cannot be changed without written consent of all the contributors.
- The list of authors should be prepared with careful attention.
 - One author should take responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole from inception to published article and should be designated as the 'corresponding author'. 
- All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section.
Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

2. Authorship: Ethics and Inclusion in International Research
The Journal of the Faculty of Medicine Baghdad promotes cooperation with colleagues in the research sites and anticipates their inclusion as co-authors upon completion of all authorship requirements. Each author is expected to have contributed significantly to the work's idea or design, data collection, analysis, or interpretation, the development of new software utilized in the work, or the drafting or significant revision of the work. The Acknowledgements section should provide a list of contributors who do not fulfill all requirements for authorship. 
In order to foster international research collaborations and adopting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 17 & SDG 3), the journal encourages researchers to carefully assess authorship criteria and researcher contributions while participating in multi-region collaborations involving local researchers.  

 3. Authorship Changes
Authors should carefully review author lists and order before submitting a manuscript and provide a final author list with the initial submission. Any addition, deletion, or reordering of author names in the author list can only be made prior to acceptance of the manuscript and must be approved by the journal editor. To request such a change, the editor must receive from the corresponding author: (a) the reason for the change to the author list and (b) written confirmation (email, letter) from all authors of their consent to the addition, deletion, or rearrangement. In the case of adding or removing authors, this also includes confirmation of the added or removed author.

4. Duties of Authors

• Reporting standards:
  Authors of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance.
  Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper.
  A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work.
  Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable.

• Originality and Plagiarism:
  The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately cited or quoted.
  Plagiarism takes many forms, from ‘passing off’ another’s paper as the author’s paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another’s paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

• Multiple, Redundant, or Concurrent Publication:
  - An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication.
  - Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.
  - We ask you to confirm that your paper is original, has not been published in its current form or a substantially similar form (in print or electronically, including on a website), has not been accepted for publication elsewhere, and that it is not under consideration by another publication.
  - The ICMJE has provided details of what is and what is not a duplicate or redundant publication. If you are in doubt, we ask you to proceed with your submission but to include a copy of the relevant previously published work or work under consideration by other journals.
  - Authors must draw attention to any published work that concerns the same patients or subjects as the present paper in a cover letter with their article.

• Acknowledgement of Sources:
  Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given.
  Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.
  Information obtained privately, as in conversation, correspondence, or discussion with third parties, must not be used or reported without explicit, written permission from the source.
  Information obtained in the course of confidential services, such as refereeing manuscripts or grant applications, must not be used without the explicit written permission of the author of the work involved in these services.

• Fundamental errors in published works:
  When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is the author’s obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

• Permission to reproduce previously published material
  The journal requires you to send us copies of permission to reproduce material (such as illustrations, Dataset) from the copyright holder.

5. Disclosure and Conflicts of Interest/ Competing Interests
- All authors should disclose in their manuscript any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that might be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript.
- All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
- All authors should disclose any personal relationships with other people or organizations that could inappropriately influence (bias) their work, such as employment, consultancies, stock ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patent applications/registrations, and grants or other funding.
- If there are no interests to declare then please state this: Conflicts of Interest: ‘None’.  
- This summary statement will be ultimately published if the article is accepted; (b) detailed disclosures as part of a separate Declaration of Interest form, which forms part of the journal's official records.
- Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors.
- Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

6. Funding
- All authors need to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading.
- Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.