The World Journal of Men’s Health (WJMH) follows the recommendations for authorship by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE, http://www.icmje.org). Authorship credit should be based on 1) substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; 2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; 3) final approval of the version to be published; and 4) agreeing to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that the questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. The authors should meet these 4 conditions.

The contributions of all authors must be described. WJMH has adopted the CRediT Taxonomy (https://credit.niso.org/) to describe each author’s individual contributions to the work. The submitting author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors at submission. We expect that all authors will have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of this time. Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect contributions to the work.

When a large multi-author group has conducted the work, the group ideally should decide who will be an author before the work is started and confirm who is an author before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript, and they should be able to take public responsibility for the work and should have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other group authors. They will also be expected as individuals to complete conflict-of-interest disclosure forms. When submitting a manuscript authored by a group, the corresponding author should specify the group name if one exists, and clearly identify the group members who can take credit and responsibility for the work as authors. Journals generally list other members of the group in the Acknowledgments.

The description of co-first authors or co-corresponding authors is accepted if the corresponding author believes that such roles existed in contributing to the manuscript.

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an ‘Acknowledgements’ section. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading.

All manuscripts must be submitted by an author and may not be submitted by a third party.

WJMH follow the COPE guidelines for changes in authorship. WJMH does not correct authorship after publication, unless a mistake has been made by the editorial board. Any changes of authorship before publication require agreement from all authors. This includes additions, deletions, and changes in ordering. Requests must come from the corresponding author along with an explanation for the change. If the change is deemed to be appropriate, the corresponding author must receive and provide to WJMH the consent to the change from all the authors, including any being added, deleted, or reordered.