The work originating from the creative activity of two or more authors – i.e. co-authors or joint authors – belongs legally to all of them, jointly and severally. Co-authorship is the result of the agreement of all the authors involved. Legal acts concerned with a co-authored work entitle and bind all co-authors equally. Co-authors make decisions on their work unanimously. Where one co-author obstructs without serious reason the production of a co-authored work, the other co-authors can ask a court to rule on the matter. A co-author can individually and independently demand the protection of copyright of the co-authored work against any jeopardy and breach. Unless co-authors agree otherwise, their shares of common royalties from the copyright of the co-authored work are proportional to their creative contributions. If these cannot be discerned, the royalties are divided equally. In the case of the Ortodoncie journal, the first (lead) author is considered the representative of all the authors, is fully responsible for the submitted manuscript and regarded as the contact person, unless expressly agreed otherwise. This does not reduce the rights of the other authors to the text. The list of co-authors must be part of the manuscript submitted to the editors and must be unambiguous.
To define the authors of a work and distinguish them from contributors who are not authors (but are acknowledged), the journal follows the recommendations for international medical periodicals of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors:
The acquisition of funding, data collection only or general supervision of the research group alone do not constitute authorship.
Contributors are people who, while not meeting the criteria for authorship, are involved in the completion of the research – for instance, by providing only technical support for the research; as heads of departments providing only general supervision over the research; as persons contributing to determining the methodology, helping to draft the study, data analysis, etc. All such contributors should be mentioned within an acknowledgments section. Individuals providing material or research funding should be also mentioned.