Should I cite casrai.org/credit for the canonical URIs?

Yes — cite casrai.org/credit for the canonical standard and per-role URIs (these are the stable identifiers consumed by JATS, Crossref, and ORCID). Cite casrai.org pages when you are referring to CASRAI guidance, history, encoding examples, or the originating community vocabulary that preceded standardisation in 2022.

How do I include CRediT in a JATS XML article?

Use the JATS element with attributes vocab="credit", vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/credit", vocab-term=" ", and vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/credit/roles/ ". Follow the JATS4R "CRediT Taxonomy" recommendation in full.

What version of CRediT should I pin to in a policy or methods statement?

Pin to ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 (the version published 8 February 2022). The 14 roles and their definitions have been stable since standardisation; a Z39.104-2.x revision is anticipated in the 2027–2028 window. Versioned pinning gives reviewers an unambiguous reference point.

Do I need permission to reuse or translate CRediT?

No. ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 is published under CC-BY 4.0. You may reuse, redistribute, translate, and embed the taxonomy commercially or non-commercially, with attribution to NISO (and acknowledgement of CASRAI as originator where appropriate).

How do I write a CRediT statement in an author contribution paragraph?

List each author followed by their roles, separated by semicolons. Optionally annotate the relative degree (lead / equal / supporting). Example: "Jane Doe — Conceptualization (lead); Methodology (equal); Writing — original draft. John Smith — Investigation; Data curation; Writing — review & editing."

How to cite CRediT

Q: What is the formal citation for the CRediT standard?

National Information Standards Organization. (2022). ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy. NISO. https://casrai.org/credit/standardization

CRediT is a community-developed taxonomy that became a formal ANSI-approved, NISO-published standard — ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 — on 8 February 2022. It is licensed under CC-BY 4.0, which makes reuse, redistribution, and translation explicitly permitted with attribution. This page is the canonical reference for how to cite CRediT in policy documents, methods sections, journal author guidelines, JATS-encoded articles, and the author-contribution paragraph itself. For the formal standardisation narrative, see ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022; for origin context, see the history of CRediT.

Citing the standard itself

The formal citation target is ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Use this when you need to refer to the taxonomy as a normative reference in policy text, methods sections, journal submission requirements, or a bibliography.

APA 7

text

National Information Standards Organization. (2022). ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy. NISO. https://casrai.org/credit/standardization

Chicago (author-date)

text

National Information Standards Organization. 2022. ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy. Baltimore, MD: NISO. https://casrai.org/credit/standardization.

Vancouver

text

National Information Standards Organization. ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy [Internet]. Baltimore (MD): NISO; 2022 [cited 2026]. Available from: https://casrai.org/credit/standardization

BibTeX

bibtex

@techreport{niso_z39104_2022,
  author       = {{National Information Standards Organization}},
  title        = {{ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy}},
  institution  = {NISO},
  address      = {Baltimore, MD},
  year         = {2022},
  month        = {February},
  type         = {ANSI/NISO Standard},
  number       = {Z39.104-2022},
  url          = {https://casrai.org/credit/standardization},
  note         = {Licensed CC-BY 4.0}
}

RIS

text

TY  - STAND
A1  - National Information Standards Organization
T1  - ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy
PB  - NISO
CY  - Baltimore, MD
PY  - 2022
DA  - 2022/02/08
UR  - https://casrai.org/credit/standardization
N1  - Licensed CC-BY 4.0
ER  -

Citing a specific CRediT role

Each of the 14 CRediT roles has a stable, machine-readable URI at casrai.org/credit and a CASRAI-stewarded definition page. Cite the canonical URI when the citation will be consumed by a machine (JATS XML, Crossref deposit, JSON-LD sameAs). Cite the CASRAI page when the citation is for human readers and you want a definition + encoding examples + worked FAQs alongside the canonical identifier.

Every individual role page renders its own ready-to-copy citation block in APA, Vancouver, Chicago, and BibTeX. The pattern is:

APA 7 — generic role pattern

text

CASRAI Editorial Board (2026). <Role name> — CRediT contributor role (v2022.1). CASRAI. https://casrai.org/credit/roles/<slug>

BibTeX — generic role pattern

bibtex

@misc{casrai_credit_<slug>_2026,
  author       = {{CASRAI Editorial Board}},
  title        = {{<Role name> — CRediT contributor role}},
  year         = {2026},
  version      = {v2022.1},
  publisher    = {CASRAI},
  howpublished = {\url{https://casrai.org/credit/roles/<slug>}},
  note         = {Aligned with ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Licensed CC-BY 4.0.}
}

Citing CRediT in a JATS XML article

JATS 1.2 and later support CRediT natively. The <role> element on a <contrib> carries four attributes that together form a citation-grade machine-readable reference. See the JATS encoding page for the full JATS4R-conformant pattern and all 14 canonical URIs.

JATS role markup (citation-grade)

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/credit"
      vocab-term="Conceptualization"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/credit/roles/conceptualization"/>

Journals that mandate CRediT in their author guidelines should also include a normative reference to ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 in their instructions to authors. Example boilerplate: "Submissions must include a CRediT statement conforming to ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Encode contributor roles in JATS using the JATS4R CRediT Taxonomy recommendation."

Citing CRediT in an author contribution statement

The CRediT statement is the actual paragraph (or structured block) at the end of an article that maps named contributors to their roles. Three worked examples:

Single contributor, multiple roles

text

Author contributions: Jane Doe — Conceptualization; Methodology; Software; Writing — original draft; Visualization.

Multiple contributors, shared roles, degree qualifier

text

Author contributions: Jane Doe — Conceptualization (lead); Methodology (equal); Writing — original draft (lead). John Smith — Methodology (equal); Investigation (lead); Data curation; Writing — review & editing. Asha Patel — Formal analysis (lead); Software; Validation; Visualization (supporting). Liang Chen — Funding acquisition; Project administration; Supervision; Writing — review & editing (supporting). All authors approved the final manuscript.

Clinical-trial style with ICMJE alignment

text

Contributor roles (per ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT): J. Doe — Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Writing — original draft; M. Garcia — Investigation, Resources, Data curation; K. Tanaka — Formal analysis, Software, Validation; R. Müller — Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing — review & editing. All listed contributors meet the four ICMJE authorship criteria.

Use the optional lead / equal / supporting degree qualifier parenthetically when multiple contributors share a role. Do not list contributors who do not meet the journal's authorship criteria in the CRediT statement — use the <ack> acknowledgements section instead.

Citing CASRAI's role in originating CRediT

CRediT was developed between 2012 and 2014 by an international working group convened at a Harvard / Wellcome Trust workshop, then stewarded by CASRAI (the Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information) as a community vocabulary from 2014 until standardisation in 2022. NISO is the current authoritative steward; CASRAI remains the originator and a community-facing reference site. Where it is useful to cite the originating role separately from the current standard, two patterns work:

Originator + steward, prose

text

The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) was originated by CASRAI (Allen et al., 2014) and is currently maintained as the ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 standard, published by NISO under CC-BY 4.0.

Originating paper (foundational reference)

text

Allen, L., Brand, A., Scott, J., Altman, M., & Hlava, M. (2014). Publishing: Credit where credit is due. Nature, 508(7496), 312–313. https://doi.org/10.1038/508312a

See the history of CRediT for the full 2012–2022 timeline and the foundational bibliography for additional primary sources.

Version pinning

For policy text, journal author guidelines, and any reference that must remain unambiguous years later, pin to the standard version:

ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 — the current and only ratified standard version (published 8 February 2022).
v2022.1 — CASRAI's editorial version label aligned to Z39.104-2022. Use on role pages and in derived works.
Pre-standardisation community vocabulary (2014–2021) — refer to "CASRAI CRediT (community version, pre-Z39.104)" if citing legacy implementations that predate February 2022. The 14 roles and definitions are substantively unchanged.

A Z39.104-2.x revision is anticipated in the 2027–2028 window. Until then, citations to "ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022" or "CRediT v2022.1" are stable, unambiguous, and machine-resolvable.

Canonical resources

casrai.org/credit — canonical page, role URIs, and standard download
casrai.org/credit/standardization — free PDF download of the standard
/credit — CASRAI's plain-language overview of CRediT
/credit/standardization — what standardisation changed in 2022
/credit/history — origin story, 2012 Harvard workshop through 2022 NISO publication
/credit/jats — JATS XML encoding reference
/resources/bibliography — foundational bibliography for CRediT and contributor-attribution research

Licence and reuse

ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 is licensed under CC-BY 4.0. This is unusually permissive for an ANSI standard and is deliberate: it allows publishers, institutions, funders, infrastructure providers, and translators to embed CRediT in tooling, policy, and author guidelines without licensing friction. Attribution to NISO (and, where appropriate, to CASRAI as originator) is the only requirement.