EMBRACE PUBLICATION POLICY

1) The major authors of a manuscript consist of the core research group, which substantially prepared and performed the research in agreement with the coordinators of the EMBRACE study and the EMBRACE research group. It usually covers the first author as major contributing scientist, 1-2 active co-workers and 1-2 supervising seniors, according to input.

2) The coordinators of the EMBRACE study and the EMBRACE research group are appropriately represented (minimum 2 persons: Richard Pötter, Kari Tanderup, Jacob Lindegaard, Christian Kirisits).

3) The principle investigators of the centers, who contributed the majority of patients, are listed as co-authors. The PI may indicate another person from the institution to replace him or her, if appropriate. This co-authorship should be minimum 5 centers in addition to Vienna and Aarhus (as represented by the EMBRACE coordinators). The total number of co-authors based on patient numbers depends on the individual journals requirements.

So far, EMBRACE manuscript drafts have covered certain sub-cohorts of the overall EMBRACE patients recruited. In these cases, the number of patients for the specific analysis of the paper is calculated per center, a ranking of the centers is performed according to these numbers.

Additional proposal

4) Some journals allow for inclusion of a 'collaborative group', with associated names, which may even be tagged in PubMed.

We would therefore like to take this opportunity to establish such an 'EMBRACE collaborative group' in publications, whenever possible, in order to acknowledge the tremendous input of all centers to the success of EMBRACE.

For the upcoming manuscripts in 2015, which are not yet submitted, we would like to introduce such a collaborative group. The number of collaborators will be graduated, according to the overall recruiting rate:

>100 patients: 3 persons in total: the PI + 2 other persons designated by the PI (1 physicist as appropriate)

50-100 patients: 2 persons in total: the PI + 1 other person designated by the PI (1 physicist as appropriate)

<50 patients: 1 person (the center PI or another person designated by the PI)