For researchers
When doing research, and especially as part of a team, best practice is always to ensure that there is clarity of roles at the beginning and throughout a research project. This will help to speed things up and avoid confusion and potential disputes at the time of reporting and writing work up, and when individuals may need to describe their contributions according to the CRediT taxonomy.
Many publishers now request contribution information using CRediT. When you are getting ready to submit an article to a journal or publisher that uses CRediT, make sure that you have discussed and agreed with your co-authors and contributors the roles that individuals have played.
Remember:
- Agree and assign roles in advance – when submitting work for publication to a journal that requires CRediT, the submitting and/or corresponding author/s will typically be required to assign CRediT roles across the author and contributor list. Where a publisher or journal does not require CRediT, you can choose to provide contributor information using CRediT in an ‘Author note’, ‘Contribution statement’ or ‘Acknowledgement’ section;
- Individuals can have several roles – it is common that researchers will have made several contributions to a research output (e.g. article) and can therefore be assigned to more than one CRediT role;
- The same role can be assigned to multiple individuals – a specific CRediT role can also be assigned to multiple individuals;
- Some roles won’t apply – each research output is different; if specific CRediT roles are not relevant to a particular output, they do not need to be included.
For publishers
CRediT is now an integrated option for journals and publishers using several well known Manuscript Submission Systems (MSSs). For example, CRediT has been available to journals using Aries System’s Editorial Manager and Clarivate’s Scholar One system since 2016 and 2018 respectively and is also available as a plug in for publishers and journals using the Open Journals System (OJS).
Publishers using MSSs where CRediT is available, should consult with their Journal Editors or Advisors to explore whether and how CRediT would be valuable for a specific journal. If you are not using an MSS that has an integrated CRediT option, you can add a recommendation for authors to describe their contributions using CRediT (e.g. in your author guidance or editorial policies).
To maximise its potential use, it is important to make CRediT information machine readable; ideally CRediT should be marked up as part of the article JATS XML (see JATS XML to support CRediT and guidance below). Crossref recently announced plans to include CRediT data in their metadata schema for publishers which will help to ensure that contributor information based on CRediT becomes more widely available.
In 2022 CRediT was approved as a NISO ANSI standard; CRediT descriptors are now available in a range of languages, see CRediT language translations.
Recommendations for applying CRediT include:
- Decide whether to use CRediT across all journals or a subset – some publishers have introduced CRediT as their only standard to describe the specific contributions of authors across all of their journals (e.g. PLOS) whereas some use CRediT across a subset of their journals.
- CRediT is NOT intended to define what constitutes authorship – but instead to describe the specific contributions of authors and other contributors that result in scholarly output; used in this way, CRediT can complement and enhance authorship. For more guidance on authorship requirements see: ICMJE guidance on authorship and COPE guidance.
- List all contributions – require that all contributors describe their roles using CRediT, including those who meet authorship criteria and those who may be listed in an Acknowledgement section of an article;
- Agree and assign roles – the submitting and/or corresponding author/s should ideally be required to assign CRediT roles across the author and contributor list; where possible, check that contributors have been given the opportunity to review and confirm the roles that have been assigned to them;
- Individuals can have several roles – individuals can make one or more type of contribution to a specific research output (e.g. article) and can therefore be assigned to more than one CRediT role;
- The same role can be assigned to multiple individuals – a specific CRediT role can be assigned to multiple individuals;
- Some roles won’t apply – each research output is different; if specific CRediT roles are not relevant to a particular output, they do not need to be included;
- Including information about the ‘degree of contribution’ is optional – where multiple individuals serve in the same role, the degree of contribution can optionally be specified as ‘lead’, ‘equal’, or ‘supporting’ [NB: Individual publishers can decide whether they request ‘Degree of contribution’ information; this is not currently part of the CRediT standard];
- Make CRediT machine readable – to maximise the potential use of CRediT, contributions should be marked up as part of the JATS XML, ideally using JATS V1.2 . If you are using JATS V1.1 you can still tag the contributions using CRediT. The JATS4R (JATS for Reuse) NISO Working Group has developed best practice guidelines for the tagging of scholarly content in JATS XML, including JATS XML to support CRediT.
- You can use the CRediT badge on your article and journal user interface to indicate that you have used the taxonomy
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If you have any questions about how to implement CRediT, please reach out to nisohq@niso.org