Authorship and Contributorship Policy

Sustainability Education Review (SuER) is committed to ensuring transparency, fairness, accountability, and appropriate recognition of contributions to scholarly work. Authorship must accurately reflect substantial intellectual contributions to the research and manuscript, while contributorship statements should provide readers with transparent information about the roles performed by each contributor.

1. Criteria for Authorship

Individuals listed as authors must have made substantial intellectual contributions to the work and must be able to take responsibility for their contributions.

To qualify for authorship, an individual should normally meet all of the following criteria:

• have made a substantial contribution to the conception or design of the study; acquisition, collection, analysis, or interpretation of data; development of methodology; or another substantial scholarly component of the work;
• have participated in drafting the manuscript or critically revising it for important intellectual content;
• have reviewed and approved the final version to be published; and
• agree to be accountable for their own contribution and to cooperate in resolving questions concerning the accuracy, integrity, or ethical conduct of the work.

Individuals who do not meet the criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors solely because of academic status, institutional position, supervision, funding, administrative responsibility, personal relationships, or other non-substantive involvement.

2. Author Contribution Statement

For manuscripts with two or more authors, SuER requires an Author Contributions Statement describing the contributions of each author.

SuER uses the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) as the preferred framework for reporting author contributions.

The CRediT taxonomy includes the following contributor roles:

• Conceptualization;
• Data curation;
• Formal analysis;
• Funding acquisition;
• Investigation;
• Methodology;
• Project administration;
• Resources;
• Software;
• Supervision;
• Validation;
• Visualization;
• Writing – original draft;
• Writing – review & editing.

An author may have more than one role, and the same role may be assigned to more than one author.

CRediT describes contributions to scholarly work but does not by itself determine eligibility for authorship. Individuals listed as authors must still satisfy SuER's authorship requirements.

3. Corresponding Author

The corresponding author serves as the primary point of communication between the journal and the author group during submission, peer review, publication, and, where necessary, post-publication discussion.

The corresponding author is responsible for:

• ensuring that all legitimate authors are included and that individuals who do not qualify for authorship are excluded;
• confirming that all authors have approved the submitted manuscript;
• ensuring that all authors have approved the final version accepted for publication;
• providing accurate author names, affiliations, email addresses, ORCID identifiers where available, and contribution information;
• communicating editorial decisions, reviewer comments, revisions, and publication information to all co-authors;
• ensuring that declarations concerning funding, competing interests, research ethics, data availability, and artificial intelligence use are complete and accurate;
• responding to reasonable editorial or post-publication enquiries concerning the article.

The corresponding author acts on behalf of the author group for communication purposes but is not automatically considered the principal or most senior contributor.

4. Author Order

The order of authors must be agreed upon by all authors before submission. SuER does not determine the order of authorship and will not arbitrate disputes concerning the relative contribution or position of authors.

Authors are encouraged to discuss authorship and author order at an early stage of the research process and to review these arrangements when substantial changes in contributions occur.

5. Changes in Authorship

Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after manuscript submission must be justified and submitted to the editorial office.

Before publication, a change in authorship normally requires:

• a clear explanation for the proposed change;
• written agreement from all existing authors;
• written agreement from any author being added or removed; and
• an updated Author Contributions Statement where applicable.

The journal may suspend peer review or publication until an authorship issue has been satisfactorily resolved.

Requests for substantial authorship changes after acceptance will receive additional editorial scrutiny. After publication, authorship changes will only be considered in exceptional and adequately documented circumstances and may require publication of a formal correction.

6. Authorship Disputes

Editors are responsible for applying the journal's authorship policy but are not normally in a position to determine which individual deserves authorship when contributors disagree.

Where an authorship dispute cannot be resolved by the authors, SuER may suspend the editorial process and request that the authors seek resolution through their institution, research-integrity office, or another appropriate independent body.

The journal may resume processing when satisfactory documentation of the resolution has been provided.

7. Guest, Gift, and Honorary Authorship

Guest, gift, and honorary authorship are prohibited.

An individual must not be included as an author solely because of:

• seniority or academic rank;
• institutional leadership;
• being a head of department, laboratory, research group, or institution;
• providing general supervision without substantial intellectual contribution;
• providing funding alone;
• personal, professional, or institutional relationships;
• expectations of reciprocity;
• the perceived ability to increase the likelihood of publication.

8. Ghost Authorship

Ghost authorship is prohibited.

Individuals who have made substantial contributions sufficient to qualify for authorship must not be deliberately omitted from the author list.

Substantial writing, analysis, research design, or other intellectual contributions made by third parties must be transparently acknowledged and appropriately attributed.

9. Acknowledgements

Individuals who contributed to the research or manuscript but do not qualify for authorship may be acknowledged, for example for technical assistance, administrative assistance, language support, data collection support, or other contributions that do not meet the journal's authorship criteria.

Where appropriate, authors should obtain permission from individuals whose names are included in the Acknowledgements section.

10. Students, Supervisors, and Power Imbalances

SuER recognizes that authorship decisions may be affected by unequal relationships of authority, particularly between students and supervisors, junior and senior researchers, employees and institutional leaders, or members of collaborative research teams.

Academic rank or supervisory authority does not automatically establish entitlement to authorship.

Likewise, students and early-career researchers who have made substantial intellectual contributions must receive appropriate authorship credit.

Authorship decisions should be based on actual scholarly contribution and accountability rather than institutional hierarchy.

11. Artificial Intelligence and Authorship

Generative artificial intelligence systems, large language models, chatbots, and other AI-assisted technologies cannot be listed as authors or co-authors.

AI systems cannot fulfil the human responsibilities associated with authorship, including approval of the final manuscript, declaration of competing interests, ownership of intellectual contributions, consent to publication, or accountability for the integrity of published work.

Human authors remain fully responsible for all content produced or modified with AI assistance. Any reportable use of AI must comply with SuER's Artificial Intelligence Policy.

12. ORCID

SuER strongly encourages all authors to provide a valid ORCID iD during submission to support accurate identification, attribution, metadata quality, and interoperability across scholarly systems.

The corresponding author's ORCID should be provided whenever available.

13. Institutional Affiliations

Author affiliations must accurately represent the institution or organization with which the author was appropriately affiliated during the conduct of the work.

Affiliations must not be fabricated, manipulated, or selected for the purpose of misleading readers about institutional involvement or increasing the perceived authority of the manuscript.

Where an author's affiliation has changed since the research was conducted, a current address may be provided separately where appropriate.

14. Responsibilities of All Authors

All authors share responsibility for protecting the integrity of the published work. If an author becomes aware of a significant error, omission, ethical concern, or research-integrity problem in a submitted or published manuscript, the author should promptly inform the journal and cooperate with any necessary correction or investigation.

15. Suspected Authorship Misconduct

Suspected guest authorship, ghost authorship, unauthorized addition or removal of authors, fraudulent author identity, affiliation manipulation, sale of authorship positions, or other forms of authorship misconduct may result in suspension of manuscript processing while the matter is investigated.

Depending on the evidence and stage of publication, appropriate actions may include rejection, correction, retraction, notification of relevant institutions, or other measures consistent with the journal's Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement.