Authorship should be restricted to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the research. All those who have made significant contributions should have the opportunity to be listed as authors. Others who have contributed to the research should be recognised but not identified as authors. The source of financial support for the project should be disclosed.

All co-authors assume a degree of responsibility for any papers they co-author. Some co-authors are responsible for presenting the entire paper as an accurate and verifiable report of the research. These include, for example, co-authors who are responsible for the integrity of key data reported in the paper, conducting analyses, writing the manuscript, presenting key findings at a conference, or providing scientific leadership to junior colleagues.

Co-authors who make specific, limited contributions to a paper are responsible for it, but may have limited responsibility for other outcomes. While not all co-authors are familiar with all aspects of the research presented in their papers, all collaborations should have an appropriate process for reviewing and ensuring the accuracy and validity of reported results, and all co-authors should be aware of this process.

Each co-author should be given the opportunity to review the manuscript prior to submission. All co-authors have an obligation to retract or correct errors in published work in a timely manner. Any individual who is unwilling or unable to take proper responsibility for a paper should not be a co-author.

As authorship requires responsibility for the submitted work, IECE does not allow ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs) to be listed as authors of manuscripts. If the author used AI tools in writing the manuscript, they should be disclosed in the Materials and Methods section of the paper, along with all other tools used in the research. This section should describe which AI tool was used and how it was used. IECE follows COPE's guidance on this topic and further recommends that "authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscripts, even those parts generated by AI tools, and therefore for any violations of publication ethics."

The collaboration should have a process to archive and validate the research record; facilitate internal communication so that all authors are fully aware of the entire work; answer questions about the joint work and enable other responsible scientists to share data. All members of the collaboration should be familiar with and understand the process.