Naming authors on a scientific paper ensures that the appropriate individuals must get credit, and are accountable, for the research. Deliberately misrepresenting a scientist’s relationship to their work is considered to be a form of misconduct that undermines confidence in the reporting of the work itself.
While, there is no universal definition of authorship, an ‘author’ is generally considered to be an individual who has made a significant intellectual contribution to the study.
There will be four criteria which must be met to be all to be credited as an author:

• Substantial contribution to the study conception and design, data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation.
• Drafting or revising the article for intellectual content.
• Approval of the final version.
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work.

Authors must follow the below mentioned standards

• Reporting standards: Authors of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed and the results, followed by an objective discussion of the significance of the work. The manuscript should contain sufficient details and references to permit others to replicate the work. Review articles should be accurate, objective and comprehensive, while editorial ‘opinion’ or perspective pieces should be clearly identified as such. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
• Data access and retention: Authors may be asked to provide the raw data of their study together with the manuscript for editorial review and should be prepared to make the data publicly available if practicable. In any event, authors should ensure accessibility of such data to other competent professionals for at least 10 years after publication (preferably via an institutional or subject-based data repository or other data centre), provided that the confidentiality of the participants can be protected and legal rights to concern proprietary data do not preclude their release.
• Originality and plagiarism: Authors should ensure that they have written and submit only entirely original works, and if they have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited. Publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the work reported in the manuscript should also be cited. Plagiarism takes many forms, from “passing off” another’s paper as the author’s own, 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 behaviour and is unacceptable.
• Multiple, duplicate, redundant or concurrent submission / publication:Papers describing essentially the same research should not be published in more than one journal or primary publication. Hence, authors should not submit for consideration a manuscript that has already been published in another journal. Submission of a manuscript concurrently to more than one journal is unethical publishing behaviour and unacceptable. The publication of some kinds of articles (such as clinical guidelines, translations) in more than one journal is sometimes justifiable, provided that certain conditions are met. The authors and editors of the journals concerned must agree to the secondary publication, which must reflect the same data and interpretation of the primary document. The primary reference must be cited in the secondary publication.

Only persons who meet these authorship criteria should be listed as authors in the manuscript as they must be able to take public responsibility for the content: (i) made significant contributions to the conception, design, execution, data acquisition, or analysis/interpretation of the study; and (ii) drafted the manuscript or revised it critically for important intellectual content; and (iii) have seen and approved the final version of the paper and agreed to its submission for publication. All persons who made substantial contributions to the work reported in the manuscript (such as technical help, writing and editing assistance, general support), but who do not meet the criteria for authorship must not be listed as an author, but should be acknowledged in the “Acknowledgements” section after their written permission to be named as been obtained. The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors (according to the above definition) and no inappropriate co-authors are included in the author list and verify that all co-authors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.