Authorship Criteria

Authorship carries both credit and accountability. Jurnal Syntax therefore applies explicit criteria for who may be listed as an author of an article, requires every author to state what they contributed, and sets out the procedure for changing an author list and for resolving a dispute. These criteria follow the recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on authorship and contributorship.

1. Who Qualifies as an Author

A person may be listed as an author only if that person meets all four of the following conditions. Meeting one or two of them earns an acknowledgement, not authorship.

1

Substantial Contribution

A substantial contribution to the conception or design of the study, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data, software, or system reported in the article.

In this field this includes: designing the architecture or algorithm, implementing the system under study, building or curating the dataset, designing the experiment or benchmark, and performing the statistical or performance analysis.

2

Drafting or Critical Revision

Drafting the manuscript or revising it critically for important intellectual content. Correcting language, formatting the template, or checking references does not by itself meet this condition.

3

Approval of the Version Submitted

Final approval of the version submitted and of every subsequent revised version, including the version accepted for publication. No person may be added to an author list without having read and approved the manuscript.

4

Accountability

Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, including the obligation to ensure that questions about the accuracy or integrity of any part of it are properly investigated and resolved. Each author must be able to identify which co-author is responsible for each specific part, and must have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of the others.

Supervision and funding are not authorshipAcquiring funding, heading a department or laboratory, supervising a thesis, providing hardware or access to a facility, or general administrative support do not, on their own, justify authorship. Where such a person also satisfies all four conditions above, authorship is of course appropriate.

2. Statement of Contributions

Every manuscript must include an Author Contributions section after the Conclusion, stating what each author did. Authors are identified by initials. Jurnal Syntax uses the CRediT contributor-role taxonomy; use the role names below, and list only the roles that actually apply.

AVAILABLE ROLES

Conceptualization · Methodology · Software · Validation · Formal analysis · Investigation · Resources · Data curation · Writing — original draft · Writing — review and editing · Visualization · Supervision · Project administration · Funding acquisition

EXAMPLE STATEMENT

“A.B.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing — original draft. C.D.: Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization. E.F.: Validation, Writing — review and editing, Supervision. All authors have read and approved the submitted version of the manuscript.”

SINGLE-AUTHOR ARTICLES

A sole author writes: “The author is solely responsible for the conception, implementation, analysis, and writing of this article.” The section is still required.

3. Order of Authors, and the Corresponding Author

Order Is Decided by the Authors

The journal does not impose an order and does not arbitrate it. The sequence must be agreed by all authors before submission, and the submitting author confirms that agreement. Where the order carries a specific meaning in the authors' field or institution, this may be explained in a footnote.

Equal Contribution

Where two or more authors contributed equally, this is stated in a footnote on the first page: “These authors contributed equally to this work.” The claim must be consistent with the Author Contributions statement.

The Corresponding Author

One author is designated as corresponding author and takes responsibility for communication with the journal throughout submission, review, revision, proofing, and after publication; for confirming that every co-author meets the criteria and has approved the manuscript; for collecting the conflict-of-interest declarations of all co-authors; for ensuring that author names, affiliations, e-mail addresses, and ORCID identifiers are correct; and for responding to queries about the article after publication.

ORCID and Institutional E-mail

Every author is strongly encouraged to supply an ORCID iD, and the corresponding author must supply an active institutional e-mail address. Free webmail addresses alone may be queried by the editorial office, because they cannot be used to verify affiliation.

4. Affiliations

  • State the affiliation where the work was done. If an author has since moved, the former affiliation is listed with the present address given in a footnote as “Present address: …”.
  • Multiple affiliations are permitted where they are genuine. Listing an institution with which the author has no substantive relationship, including for the purpose of improving an institution's publication count, is a form of misconduct.
  • Write affiliations in full — department or study program, faculty, institution, city, and country — and spell the institution's name consistently across all the author's articles, so that indexing services attribute them correctly.
  • Students and supervisors. An article derived from a thesis, final project, or dissertation should name both the student and the supervisor as authors where each meets the four conditions, and must state in the Acknowledgement that the article is derived from that work.

5. Acknowledgement Instead of Authorship

Contributors who do not meet all four conditions are named in the Acknowledgement, with their contribution stated — for example technical help, provision of data or equipment, language editing, proofreading, or general supervision. Because an acknowledgement may imply endorsement of the findings, the corresponding author must obtain written consent from each person named before submission.

6. Practices the Journal Does Not Accept

Gift or honorary authorship

Listing a senior colleague, supervisor, department head, or funder who did not meet the four conditions, as a courtesy or in expectation of favour.

Guest authorship

Adding a well-known researcher, or an author from another institution or country, in order to raise the apparent standing of the manuscript or to satisfy an affiliation quota.

Ghost authorship

Omitting a person who met the four conditions, including a professional writer, a student, or a contractor who drafted substantial parts of the text.

Sold or purchased authorship

Paying for, selling, or brokering a position on an author list, or submitting a manuscript obtained from a paper mill. This is treated as serious misconduct and is reported to the institutions of all parties.

Artificial intelligence as an author

A generative artificial-intelligence tool cannot be an author, because it cannot approve a manuscript or be accountable for it. Use of such a tool is disclosed in the Acknowledgement, naming the tool and its role, and the human authors remain fully responsible for everything in the article, including every reference.

7. Changing the Author List After Submission

The author list, the order, and the corresponding author are expected to be final at submission. A change after submission is permitted only where it corrects a genuine error of omission or inclusion, and never as a means of adding a person who did not contribute.

1

Before an Acceptance Decision

The corresponding author writes to the editorial office stating: the change requested, the reason for it, and the contribution of any author being added, assessed against the four conditions. The request must be accompanied by written agreement from every author on the original list and from the author being added or removed. The handling editor may ask for further explanation before approving the change.
2

After Acceptance but Before Publication

The same requirements apply, and the decision rests with the Editor in Chief. Publication is held until the matter is settled. A change at this stage that cannot be justified against the four conditions results in the acceptance being withdrawn.
3

After Publication

The published author list is part of the version of record and is never edited silently. A justified change is made through a Corrigendum under the Correction and Retraction policy, stating what changed and why. Where the original list was falsified, the article is retracted.

8. Authorship Disputes

  • The journal does not adjudicate. Jurnal Syntax is not able to determine who contributed what within a research team, and will not take sides in a disagreement between authors.
  • Processing is suspended. On receiving notice of a dispute, the editorial office suspends review, acceptance, or publication of the manuscript and informs all named authors.
  • Referral. The authors are asked to resolve the matter between themselves and, where they cannot, the journal refers it to the research-integrity office or head of department of the institution where the work was done, and acts on that institution's determination.
  • A published article stays published. Pending resolution of a dispute about a published article, the article remains available. Where the editors judge that readers should be alerted, an Expression of Concern is issued; it is replaced by a Corrigendum or a Retraction once the matter is settled.
  • Record. The correspondence is retained in the editorial record for at least ten years.

9. What Authors Confirm at Submission

By submitting to Jurnal Syntax, the corresponding author confirms on behalf of all authors that:

  • ✓ Every person listed meets all four authorship conditions in Section 1.
  • ✓ No person who meets those conditions has been omitted.
  • ✓ All authors have read and approved the version submitted, and agree to the author order.
  • ✓ The Author Contributions statement is complete and accurate.
  • ✓ All affiliations are genuine and are stated in full.
  • ✓ Everyone named in the Acknowledgement has consented in writing.
  • ✓ Any use of generative artificial intelligence has been disclosed.
  • ✓ All authors have declared their conflicts of interest under the Conflict of Interest policy.

Queries and requests under this policy:
Editorial Office, Jurnal Syntax — Authorship
Software Engineering Study Program, Faculty of Engineering and Computer Science, Universitas Dharmawangsa
Jl. K.L. Yos Sudarso No. 224, Medan 20115, North Sumatra, Indonesia
E-mail: admin_syntax@dharmawangsa.ac.id — subject line: “Authorship: [manuscript ID or article DOI]”

These criteria follow the ICMJE recommendations on defining the role of authors and contributors, and the COPE guidance on authorship and contributorship. See publicationethics.org/authorship