New Requirements for Authors: Signed Statements of Authorship Responsibility and Financial Disclosure

Editors of peer-reviewed journals have relationships based on trust with authors, readers, owners, editorial board members, reviewers, funding agencies, institutions, students, advertisers, the media, and the public at large. These trust relationships frequently come into conflict, the product of obvious differences in goals, values, and priorities. Other differences arise from faulty communications. Still others arise from ignorance of editorial and authorial ethics and publication laws, sloppiness of work, and sometimes deliberate attempts to deceive. To educate authors and help them avoid the pitfalls of ignorance and to discourage a few from believing that the ethics and laws do not apply to them, peer-reviewed journals codify their policies and procedures in Instructions for Authors.1Many journals specify similar instructions such as the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals" produced and updated periodically by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (the Vancouver Group).2In 1985, the Vancouver