Guide
The 14 CRediT contributor roles
ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 defines exactly 14 contributor roles. Each role describes a distinct type of contribution researchers make to published scholarly output, and each can carry a lead, equal, or supporting qualifier.
The step most authors miss
Doing CRediT right? Don’t stop at the statement.
A CRediT statement credits you inside one paper. The recognition CRediT was built for happens when those roles are tied to you, persistently. Sign in with your ORCID — free — and claim your CRediT contributions on casrai.org, the home of the standard. They become a verified, portable part of your identity, not a line that disappears into one PDF.
Free: claim your contributions, then export a journal-ready CRediT statement, schema.org structured data, JATS XML, CSV or BibTeX — and preview your public profile. A membership publishes that profile publicly and verifies the journals you serve.
Planning and design roles
Conceptualisation: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims. This is the intellectual genesis of the work — identifying the research question and framing the study. Methodology: Development or design of methodology; creation of models. Distinct from Investigation (which performs the experiments), Methodology covers the design of the study procedures and analytical approach. Software: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components. Software covers everyone who wrote, extended or tested research code.
Research and analysis roles
Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs. Formal analysis: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesise study data. Investigation: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection. Resources: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools. Data curation: Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
Communication roles
Writing – original draft: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation). Writing – review and editing: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision — including pre- or post-publication stages. Visualisation: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualisation/data presentation.
Management roles
Supervision: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team. Project administration: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution. Funding acquisition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication. Each management role captures a distinct accountability: Supervision is intellectual and mentorship leadership; Project administration is logistics and coordination; Funding acquisition is grant and award procurement.
How to assign roles
Role assignment is typically done collaboratively by all co-authors before manuscript submission. Each author indicates which roles they performed, using the lead/equal/supporting qualifier where roles are shared. Publishers implement assignment through submission system checkboxes (Editorial Manager, ScholarOne, or their own portals). The resulting contribution statement appears in the published article and is encoded in JATS XML. A single author can hold multiple roles, and a single role can be held by multiple authors. Authors should be honest and specific — resist the temptation to assign a role to anyone who did not genuinely perform it.
Key facts
At a glance
- Count: 14 roles defined in ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022
- Groups: Planning & design, Research & analysis, Communication, Management
- Qualifier: each role optionally takes lead / equal / supporting
- Assignment: all authors, typically through publisher submission system
- Multiple: one author can hold multiple roles; one role can span multiple authors
- URIs: canonical identifiers at casrai.org/credit/roles/<slug>
- XML: encoded in JATS as <role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="...">
- Standard: ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, NISO, CC BY 4.0
Common misconceptions
What people often get wrong
Often heard: Only the first or corresponding author needs to be assigned roles.
Actually: All named authors should be assigned the roles they genuinely performed. CRediT is designed to make everyone's contributions visible, not only lead authors.
Often heard: An author must hold at least one of the Writing roles to be listed as an author.
Actually: CRediT roles do not determine authorship eligibility — that is governed by journal authorship criteria (commonly ICMJE). An author could, for example, hold only Investigation and Resources and still meet authorship criteria.
Often heard: You need to use all 14 roles for every paper.
Actually: Only the roles that are genuinely applicable to the specific paper should be assigned. Many papers will use 6–10 roles; the rest are simply left unassigned.
Common questions
FAQ
What is the difference between Methodology and Investigation?+
Methodology covers designing the study procedures and analytical approach. Investigation covers performing the actual experiments, trials, or data collection. One researcher may do both, or they may be separate.
Does "Writing – review and editing" apply to all co-authors who reviewed the manuscript?+
Yes, if a co-author critically reviewed and revised the manuscript text, they should receive Writing – review and editing. It applies to all substantive textual revision, not only the named corresponding author.
How are the canonical URIs structured?+
Each role has a URI at casrai.org/credit/roles/<slug>, for example casrai.org/credit/roles/conceptualization. These are the identifiers used in JATS XML and CrossRef metadata to unambiguously identify each role.
