Direct comparison
Nature vs Science vs Cell vs PNAS: Author Credit
Compare Nature, Science, Cell, and PNAS on author-contribution statement requirements: CRediT vs free-text, eligibility criteria, and guarantor rules.
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Side-by-side comparison
| Dimension | Nature | Science | Cell | PNAS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Publisher / journal family | Springer Nature (Nature Portfolio flagship) | AAAS (Science, Science Advances, Sci. Translational Medicine, Sci. Robotics, Sci. Signaling, Sci. Immunology) | Cell Press, an Elsevier imprint (Cell, Neuron, Immunity, Cell Reports, Cell Metabolism, and related titles) | National Academy of Sciences (independent, not a commercial-publisher imprint) |
| Contribution statement required at submission? | Yes, for every submitted paper including review-type articles | No, encouraged but optional; AAAS separately requires ICMJE-style authorship declarations | Yes, across all Cell Press journals | Yes, mandatory in every published article |
| Statement format | Free-text narrative written by the authors, no mandated taxonomy | Free-text, if supplied; no per-author structured role tags required | Structured CRediT role matrix (14 roles), assigned at submission | CRediT taxonomy for current submissions; legacy five-category checklist (1995 era) still visible in many published articles |
| Authorship-eligibility criteria behind the statement | McNutt et al. (2018, PNAS) framework, explicitly not the ICMJE four-part test | ICMJE-style criteria, applied separately from the optional contribution note | ICMJE's four criteria, cited directly as Cell Press's authorship standard | PNAS's own authorship policy plus a guarantor requirement |
| Corresponding-author obligations | Standard point-of-contact role; no separate formal guarantor designation | Standard point-of-contact role under AAAS's ICMJE-style policy | Standard point-of-contact role under Cell Press's ICMJE-based policy | Must formally serve as guarantor of a significant part or all of the work; ORCID iD required |
| Equal-contribution / joint-supervision designations | Explicitly permitted and commonly used, for both equal contribution and joint supervision | Used informally; not a codified structured field | Common footnote convention alongside the CRediT matrix, standard Elsevier-wide practice | Used as a footnote convention alongside the contribution statement |
| Where the statement appears / reuse | Printed "Author contributions" section in the article | In the acknowledgments section, when provided; no dedicated contributions section | Structured "Author contributions" section; also deposited to Crossref as machine-readable CRediT metadata | Dedicated "Author contributions" statement printed in every article |
Common questions
FAQ
Do all four journals require the CRediT taxonomy?+
No. Cell Press requires it and PNAS now directs current submissions to it, but Nature accepts a free-text statement without CRediT role tags, and Science only encourages a contribution note at all, whether or not it uses CRediT-style wording.
Why do some older PNAS papers list "Designed research" and "Performed research" instead of CRediT roles?+
That is PNAS's own legacy five-category checklist, in use since the mid-1990s and predating CRediT by roughly two decades. Current PNAS submissions are directed to the standard CRediT taxonomy, but the checklist's language is still visible in the contributions statements of already-published articles.
Can I reuse the same author-contributions text across all four journals?+
Not directly. The underlying role assignments (who conceived the study, who ran the analysis, who wrote the draft) are the stable, reusable part. The statement text has to be rebuilt per journal: as free-text prose for Nature, folded into acknowledgments or omitted for Science, and as a structured CRediT matrix for Cell Press or PNAS.
Does PNAS's guarantor requirement mean something different from being the corresponding author?+
They are usually the same person, but the guarantor designation is a distinct, formal accountability requirement specific to PNAS: the corresponding author must take responsibility for the integrity of a significant part or all of the work, not just serve as the point of contact for correspondence.
Going deeper
