Authorship Criteria

While specific authorship criteria may vary across scientific disciplines, there are several widely recognized guidelines including those from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The specific authorship criteria used by a journal is often available in a journal’s author instructions. Generally speaking, however, to be named as an author, you should have made substantive contributions to a manuscript including, but not limited to:

• Basic physical ideas or discussion
• Designing the research concept
• Laboratory experiments
• Detailed calculations
• Writing the manuscript

Optica Publishing Group’s authorship criteria are described in the Obligations of Authors section of our Guidelines Concerning Ethical Practices in the Publication of Research.