Authorship Policy

Authorship policy is set by journals and generally states that coauthors must have contributed to 2 or more of the following tasks:

1) Design of the protocol;

2) Collection of data;

3) Analysis and interpretation; 

4) Preparation and critical review of the manuscript.

The current plan is that Dr. Stoppe would be first author and take primary responsibility for guiding the analysis and drafting the primary manuscript, and Dr. Cancio would be second author and Dr. A. Hill third provided they continue their respective roles as members of the executive and enroll patients throughout the duration of the trial. Dr. Heyland would be senior or last author. We will further grant an authorship to each national leading Principal Investigator who receives approval by national ethic committee (if applicable) and national regulatory authorities and support enrollments at a minimum of 2 other sites in their country.

It is generally understood that members of the VICToRY Steering Committee and others who provide significant service throughout the entire duration of the trial would be considered co-authors (for example but not limited to significant recruitments and support as part of the network development process or support to get external funding).  

As an incentive and to acknowledge the top enrolling sites, we plan to offer ‘authorship’ to the overall top quartile of enrolling sites that assist with the write up phase of the paper. For our top recruiters (best 5), we will consider a 2^ndauthor as part of the study group (not listed under the title but in Pubmed). All participating sites, which recruited > 30 patients will be at least listed in the so called study group (not under the title), so that the name appears at Pubmed together with the study. Sites should clarify locally, who will be the potential author to be listed.

It is likely that numerous secondary manuscripts will be generated. We will solicit from the remaining list of site investigators not included in the primary publication to see if any would like to be involved in the development of secondary publications.

Acknowledgement Section

All participating Burn Units/ICUs will be acknowledged in the ‘Acknowledgement section’ of the primary manuscript emerging from the VICToRY trial. The participating institution as well as the names of the principal site investigator and research coordinator will be noted in the acknowledgement section of the appendix document.

Members of the Data Monitoring Committee will also be mentioned in the acknowledgement section.