5.2 Acknowledgments.

If you wish your merit to be known, acknowledgethat of other people.     ProverbAcknowledgments typically are used to list grant or funding support, donors of equipment or supplies, technical assistance, and important specific contributions from individuals who do not qualify for authorship (see , Manuscript Preparation, Acknowledgment Section, and , Authorship Responsibility, Authorship: Definition, Criteria, Contributions, and Requirements). Sufficient space should be provided in publications, either in print or online, for acknowledgments so that authors can properly credit all important contributions.In the Acknowledgment, authors identify important sources of financial and material support and assistance and give credit to all persons who have ...Less

In the Acknowledgment, authors identify important sources of financial and material support and assistance and give credit to all persons who have made substantial contributions to the work but who are not authors., Contributions commonly recognized in an acknowledgment include the following: General advice, guidance, or supervisionCritical review of the manuscriptCritical review of study proposal, design, or methodsData collectionData analysisStatistical assistance or adviceTechnical assistance or adviceResearch assistance or adviceWriting assistanceEditorial assistanceBibliographic assistanceClerical assistanceManuscript preparationFinancial supportMaterial supportGrant supportAcknowledgments should identify anyone who has made substantial intellectual contributions to manuscripts but does not meet the criteria for authorship, including medical writers and ...Less

A list of participants in a collaborative group may also be included in the Acknowledgment (see , Authorship Responsibility, Group and Collaborative Authorship). However, a lengthy acknowledgment may occupy an excessive amount of journal space. Some editors have proposed limits on the length of an acknowledgment (eg, 1 column of a journal page or 600 words of reduced type), but such limits seem contrary to commitments to greater transparency of the contributions to scientific publication, and journals should carefully evaluate the appropriateness of any limits on the length of acknowledgments. Yet the need to credit assistance from individuals, especially in ...Less

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) encourages authors and journals to disclose authors' individual contributions to the work reported in published articles. Following this recommendation, a number of journals now publish lists of author contributions in the article’s “Acknowledgment” section. For example, JAMA publishes each author’s contributions, as shown in the example in the . ...Less

Authors' financial disclosures should be published with articles, either on the title page or in the Acknowledgment section. JAMA and the Archives Journals include authors' financial disclosures in the Acknowledgment section at the end of the article. JAMA requires authors to include all potential conflicts of interest, including specific financial interests and relationships and affiliations (other than those affiliations listed in the title page of the manuscript) relevant to the subject of their manuscript in the Acknowledgment section at the time the manuscript is submitted. Authors without conflicts of interest, including specific financial interests and relationships and affiliations relevant to ...Less

The ICMJE recommends that editors request authors of studies funded by companies or agencies with proprietary or financial interests in the study outcomes to sign a statement indicating that they had access to all of the data and can vouch for the integrity of the data analyses. For example, for all reports containing original data, JAMA and some of the Archives Journals require at least 1 author (eg, the principal investigator) who is independent of any commercial funder to indicate that she or he “had full access to all of the data in the study and takes responsibility for the ...Less

UPDATE: We will discontinue using quotation marks to identify parts of an article, but retain the capitalization; eg, This is discussed in the Methods section (not the “Methods” section). This change was made February 14, 2013.Information about funding, sponsorship, or other financial or material support should also be clearly and completely identified in the Acknowledgment section, if not already reported in the Methods section., For all manuscripts that are funded by commercial, governmental, or private entities, a description of the role of the sponsor(s) in the work reported and the preparation, submission, and review of the manuscript should be published ...Less

An example of the Acknowledgment section including all possible elements as it would appear in JAMA or any of the Archives Journals is shown in the Box. In print journals, author affiliations and correspondence information typically are published on the title page (or first page) of an article. However, in some cases (eg, articles with lengthy abstracts and author bylines) and in some journals, there may not be sufficient room for all of this information and it may be published in the Acknowledgment section at the end of the article with a note indicating such on the first page of ...Less

Identification of individuals in an acknowledgment may imply their endorsement of the article’s content. Thus, persons should not be listed in an acknowledgment without their knowledge and consent. For this reason, the ICMJE and JAMA require the corresponding author to obtain written permission from any individuals named in the Acknowledgment section and to certify in writing to the editor that such permission has been obtained.,, ...Less

Following the rationale that including a person’s name in an acknowledgment may imply endorsement of a manuscript’s content, citing an individual’s name in a personal communication citation may carry the same implication. The ICMJE recommends that authors who name an individual as a source for information in a personal communication, be it through conversation, telephone call, or a letter sent by mail, fax, or e-mail, obtain written permission from that individual to be named. JAMA and the Archives Journals follow the ICMJE recommendation and require authors to forward copies of all personal communication permissions to the editorial office. The same ...Less