Authorship Criteria & Author Contributions

Bulletin of Management and Business (BMB) is committed to maintaining transparency, accountability, and ethical standards in scholarly publishing. Authorship must accurately reflect the intellectual contributions of individuals involved in the preparation and development of a manuscript.

This policy is informed by the principles and guidance of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and uses the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to describe individual contributions. All authors are expected to agree on authorship, the order of authors, and the final version of the manuscript before submission.

Authorship should be based on substantial scholarly contributions to the work. Individuals listed as authors should have made a meaningful contribution to the research or manuscript, participated in its development or critical revision, approved the submitted version, and accepted appropriate accountability for their contributions.

BMB encourages authors to use the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) to identify and describe the specific contributions of each author. The roles below may be assigned as appropriate to the research and manuscript.

The corresponding author serves as the primary contact between BMB and all authors throughout the submission, peer-review, revision, and publication processes. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all authors have approved the submitted manuscript and that the author list, affiliations, contact information, and contribution statements are accurate.

The corresponding author must also communicate editorial decisions and revision requests to co-authors, coordinate responses, disclose relevant conflicts of interest, and ensure that all required declarations and supporting documents are submitted. These responsibilities do not remove the accountability of individual co-authors for their own contributions.

Individuals who contribute to a manuscript but do not meet the applicable authorship expectations should not be listed as authors solely because of their position, affiliation, funding role, or general supervision. Their contributions may instead be acknowledged in the Acknowledgments section, where appropriate.

Examples may include administrative assistance, routine technical support, language editing, or other limited contributions. Authors should obtain permission from individuals before identifying them by name in the Acknowledgments section and should disclose relevant assistance transparently.

The order of authors should be determined collectively by the authors before manuscript submission, based on the nature and extent of their contributions and the conventions of their academic discipline. BMB does not impose a universal authorship-order system for all disciplines.

Any request to add, remove, or rearrange authors after submission must be explained to the editorial team and supported by written agreement from all affected authors, including those being added or removed. BMB may suspend editorial processing while the request is assessed. Changes will not be made solely on the request of one author without appropriate agreement and clarification.

BMB does not accept practices that misrepresent the actual contributions of individuals to a scholarly work. Such practices may include:

• Gift or honorary authorship: listing an individual who has not made an appropriate scholarly contribution.
• Guest authorship: adding a person's name to increase the perceived credibility of a manuscript without a justified contribution.
• Ghost authorship: omitting an individual who made a substantial contribution when that contribution should be disclosed.
• Unauthorized authorship changes: adding, removing, or changing author order without the required agreement.
• Misrepresentation of contributions: claiming roles or contributions that do not accurately reflect the work performed.

Concerns about authorship may be assessed by the editorial team in accordance with BMB's publication ethics procedures and relevant COPE guidance.

All authors are encouraged to resolve authorship disagreements through open communication and mutual agreement. If a dispute arises during submission, peer review, or publication, the editorial team may request written explanations and relevant documentation from the parties involved.

BMB will seek to handle authorship concerns fairly and impartially, with reference to relevant COPE guidance. The journal may pause the editorial process while a dispute remains unresolved. Where necessary, the matter may be referred to the relevant institution or appropriate authority, because the journal is not a substitute for a formal institutional investigation.

Authors must provide a clear and accurate statement describing each author's contribution to the manuscript. The statement should use relevant CRediT roles where applicable and should reflect the work actually performed. Not every role needs to be assigned to every author, and a role assignment alone does not establish authorship eligibility.

The contribution statement should be included in the manuscript or provided through the journal's submission system, in accordance with the instructions for authors.

The example above is illustrative only. Authors must replace it with a statement that accurately represents the contributions made to their own manuscript.