Authors' reply

Arfan Ul Bari¹ , Simeen Ber Rahman²

¹ Department of Dermatology, Combined Military Hospital, Muzaffarabad, AJK, Pakistan
² Military Hospital, Rawalpindi, Pakistan

Correspondence Address:
Arfan Ul Bari
Consultant Dermatologist, Combined Military Hospital, Muzaffarabad, AJK
Pakistan

Sir,

First of all I appreciate the efforts and the hard work put in by my critic to bring about certain points ^[1] regarding my article titled "Many faces of cutaneous leishmaniasis". ^[2]

Here is my reply regarding the comments raised.

1. Figure 5, as pointed out in the letter, was contributed by the second author of my article and she was also the coauthor of the article published in the British Journal of Dermatology. Thus, there is no question of plagiarism.
2. Authors were duly credited in both the articles according to authorship criteria. ^[3]
3. It must be understood that collecting data and authorship are two entirely different issues. For collecting data, all authors need not be present simultaneously at the same place. ^[3],[4] There was no second author in the article published from Sierra Leone. The name of the second author appeared due to a printing error by the publisher of the journal. (I have already intimated this error to the editor of the concerned journal and he has apologized for the omission and pledged to publish an "erratum" in the forthcoming issue.)
4. The above-mentioned point appropriately clarifies all the ambiguities and doubts raised by my critic regarding simultaneous conduction of studies by two authors at three different centers.
5. There is no duplication of either title or contents of previously published data/article. The article titled "Morphological patterns of cutaneous leishmaniasis seen in Pakistan" ^[5] was more about morphological patterns of typical cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis from all four provinces of Pakistan and the present study was basically aimed to encompass the unusual clinical spectrum from some geographically restricted areas and to highlight few emerging atypical faces of the disease.

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3.	Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals: Writing and editing for biomedical publication International Committee of Medical Journal Editors Updated October 2005 (www.icmje.org). Indian J Pharmacol 2006;38:149-62. [Google Scholar]
4.	Nayak BK, Moreker S, Pawar D. ABC of authorship: Aims, banes and credits. Indian J Ophthalmol 2005;53:223-4. [Google Scholar]
5.	Simeen BR, Bari AU. Morphological patterns of cutaneous leishmaniasis seen in Pakistan. J Pak Assoc Dermatol 2002; 12:122-9. [Google Scholar]