THE AUTHOR AND CONTRIBUTORS

1.1. Authorship Dental Press recognizes the importance of categorizing the individuals who contributed to a study or research, and therefore describes what it entails to name each person credited in the article. Authorship ensures credit and has significant academic, social, and financial implications. Authorship also implies responsibility and accountability for the published work. The following definitions aim to ensure that contributors who made substantial intellectual contributions to an article receive credit as authors, but also that those credited as authors understand their role in assuming responsibility and being accountable for what is published.

As authorship does not detail which contributions qualify an individual to be named as an author, Dental Press requests information about the contributions of each involved and named person as a way to verify the involvement of each individual who contributed to the work. Editors are encouraged to develop and implement contribution policies that optimize the processes, removing some of the ambiguity surrounding authorship, but they do not solve the issue of the quantity and quality of contribution that qualifies an individual as an author. The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) has developed authorship criteria, described below, which are adopted by Dental Press International.

1.2. The Author

Dental Press follows the parameters of the ICMJE, which recommend that authorship of a work is based on four main criteria:

● Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the study; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for a work.

● Drafting the work or critically revising it.

● Final approval of the version to be published.

● Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are properly investigated and resolved.

In this way, in addition to being responsible for the parts of the work they have carried out, the author must be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for each specific part of the study. In order to have a standard naming convention, all those designated as authors must meet the four aforementioned criteria for authorship, and all those who meet these four criteria must be identified as authors.

These criteria aim to preserve authorship status for those who deserve it, and who can take responsibility for the work — with all the benefits and responsibilities that come with that status. The goal of these guidelines is not to disqualify professionals in the field or create conflicts within research and study groups. On the contrary, they serve as a basis for promoting a healthy publishing environment, prioritizing the merit of each individual involved in the final version of the work.

The individuals conducting the work are responsible for identifying those who meet the criteria, and they should do so when planning the execution of the study, modifying as appropriate as the research progresses. Once again, Dental Press emphasizes that, following the ICMJE guidelines, collaboration and co-authorship with colleagues at the research site is encouraged. It is the collective responsibility of the authors — not the journal to which the work is submitted — to determine all persons named as authors and whether each of them meets the established criteria.

Therefore, it is not the role of Clinical Orthodontics editors to determine who qualifies as an author of the study or arbitrate authorship conflicts. If it is not possible to reach an agreement on authorship qualifications, the institution(s) where the work was conducted, and not the journal editor, should be contacted to investigate the case. The criteria used to determine the order in which authors are listed on the title page of the article may vary and should be collectively decided by the group of authors, not the editorial body of the journal.

If the authors of the study request the removal or addition of an author after the submission or publication of the initial manuscript, the editors of Dental Press International will seek an explanation and a statement of agreement with the requested change, signed by all listed authors and the author to be removed or added.

The corresponding author, or principal author, is the one who takes primary responsibility for communicating with the journal during the manuscript submission, peer review, and publication process. The corresponding author typically ensures that all administrative requirements of the journal—such as providing author details, committee ethics approval, clinical trial registration documentation, and disclosure of relationships and activities—are properly met and reported, although these functions may be delegated to one or more co-authors.

The corresponding author should be available throughout the submission and peer review process to respond to editorial queries in a timely manner and should be available after publication to address criticisms of the work and cooperate with any requests from the journal for additional data or information if there are any concerns about the work after publication. While the corresponding author is primarily responsible for correspondence with the journal, Dental Press, following the ICMJE recommendations, requests its editors to send copies of all correspondence to all listed authors.

When a large group of multiple authors conducts the work, it is suggested that the group decides who will be the corresponding author before the work is initiated and confirms who that author is before submitting the manuscript for publication. All members of the group named as authors must meet all four criteria for authorship, including approval of the final manuscript; they must be able to take public responsibility for the work and have full confidence in the accuracy and integrity of the work of other authors in the group. They will also need to individually complete disclosure forms for relationships and activities.

1.3. Contribution to the study

Collaborators who do not meet the four criteria mentioned in section 1.2 should not be listed as authors but should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that, on their own, do not qualify a collaborator for authorship include obtaining funding, overall research group supervision, general administrative support, assistance in writing, technical editing, language editing, and review. Those whose contributions do not justify authorship can be individually or collectively acknowledged, such as under a heading like "clinical researchers" or "participating researchers," and their specific contributions should be specified. Examples of attributions that can be made include "contributed as a scientific consultant," "critically reviewed the study proposal," and "analyzed the collected data."

As this acknowledgement may imply endorsement by the recognized individuals regarding the data and conclusions of a study, editors are advised to require that the corresponding author obtain written permission from all individuals and recognized collaborators in the study.

Based on the editorial experience gained from publishing the Dental Press Journal of Orthodontics since 1996, Dental Press Publishers created the Dental Press Clinical Orthodontics Journal with the aim of promoting discussion, exchanging clinical experiences, and disseminating scientific knowledge.

Since its first issue in February 2002, the journal has brought together prominent figures in orthodontics, publishing bimonthly in Portuguese. After twenty years, the journal would rank among the top 25 most important orthodontic publications in the world, according to the classification of the Scopus platform, the largest and most prestigious international database for technical-scientific data.

Under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Marcio Rodrigues de Almeida, the Dental Press Clinical Orthodontics Journal has been gaining increasing prominence in the global orthodontics scene. Since 2020, editions have also been published in English, and the journal became known as Clinical Orthodontics. It is currently the official publication of ALADO (Latin American Association of Orthodontics) and is referenced by ABOR (Brazilian Association of Orthodontics and Facial Orthopedics).

With a total of 120 issues and around 800 published articles, Clinical Orthodontics (Dental Press Clinical Orthodontics Journal) is indexed in major databases and has an online article submission platform, where manuscripts from around the world are evaluated through the double-blind peer review process and meet the highest scientific standards