Dictionary domainTrack A
CRediT extensions and adjacent contribution vocabularies
Extending CRediT to acknowledged contributors, peer reviewers, technical staff.
For implementers
Operational deployment checklist for CRediT extensions and adjacent contribution vocabularies: prerequisites, five deploy steps, integration notes for Pure, Symplectic Elements, Worktribe, DSpace, and more, plus the pitfalls that recur in the field.
Terms in this domain
44 terms
PLOS ONE Author Contributions Statement
A PLOS ONE author contributions statement is the mandatory, structured disclosure every PLOS ONE submission must include, attributing specific tasks in the reported work to each named author individually. It is required at online submission, is separate from PLOS's authorship-eligibility criteria (adapted from McNutt et al. 2018 rather than the ICMJE four-point test) and from the acknowledgments section (which credits non-author helpers, not listed authors), and is published alongside the final article. Since PLOS's 2016 taxonomy switch, the statement is built from the 14-role CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy, now ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022) vocabulary. Before that, from PLOS ONE's 2006 launch through 2016, the same requirement existed but used PLOS's own five-category list: Conceived and designed the experiments; Performed the experiments; Analyzed the data; Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools; Wrote the paper.
Last Author
The name occupying the final position in a scholarly work's byline. In contribution-ranked fields -- most consistently biomedicine and the life sciences -- this position conventionally signals the senior investigator or principal investigator who supervised the study and obtained funding, distinct from the first author who typically performed the primary hands-on work. Last-author position is not itself an ICMJE authorship criterion, and the convention does not apply uniformly: alphabetical-order fields (mathematics, particle physics, much of economics) carry no such signal, and last author is not automatically the same person as the corresponding author.
Nature Author Contributions
Nature's author contributions policy requires every submitted paper to include a free-text statement describing each author's role, built on authorship criteria drawn from McNutt et al. (2018) rather than ICMJE's four-part test, and without mandating the CRediT taxonomy for the statement itself. It also permits explicit "contributed equally" and "jointly supervised" co-author designations and prohibits authorship changes after acceptance.
PNAS Author Contributions
PNAS Author Contributions refers to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences' requirement that every published paper carry a structured statement of who did what, plus a corresponding-author guarantor clause. PNAS pioneered this in 1995, using its own fixed checklist that predates CRediT (ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022) by roughly two decades; current submissions are directed to the standard CRediT taxonomy while PNAS retains its guarantor requirement and adds a mandatory ORCID for the corresponding author.
Group Authorship
Group authorship (also called consortium authorship or collaborative-group authorship) is the practice of listing a named collaboration, consortium, or working group as an author entity on a publication's byline, rather than (or in addition to) listing only individual researchers. ICMJE's own wording is direct on this: "Some large multi-author groups designate authorship by a group name, with or without the names of individuals." Two configurations occur in practice: (1) the group name appears alongside a full list of individually named authors, functioning mainly as citation shorthand; or (2) the group name alone is the primary visible byline, with the full roster of individual contributors published separately (an appendix, supplementary file, or membership list). What qualifies a case as group authorship rather than an ordinary large-author paper is that the collaboration/consortium name itself functions as a citable author entity. Per ICMJE, this naming convention does not relax the underlying bar: every individual credited as an author within the group -- whether visible on the byline or listed separately -- must independently satisfy all four ICMJE authorship criteria (substantial contribution, drafting/critical revision, final approval, and accountability). This is distinct from ordinary multi-institutional co-authorship (many named individuals, no group entity name) and from an acknowledgments section (which by definition credits people or entities that do NOT meet authorship criteria).
FORCE11 (Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship)
FORCE11 (Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship) is a global, member-driven nonprofit community of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers, and research funders working to make scholarly communication more open, transparent, and reusable across every stage of the research lifecycle -- not only the final journal article. An initiative qualifies as FORCE11's work if it was developed through one of its working groups or endorsed community declarations (for example the FAIR Guiding Principles, the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, the Software Citation Principles, or the Resource Identification Initiative behind RRIDs) and carries FORCE11's name as convener or co-convener, as opposed to work that merely cites or is philosophically aligned with FORCE11's broader open-scholarship goals without having gone through its community process.
Lead Author
A person is called a "lead author" in one of two distinct senses. Most commonly, it is an informal synonym for first author: the name listed first in a scholarly work's byline, conventionally read (in contribution-ranked fields) as the person who did the largest share of the practical work, and used interchangeably with "first author" especially in press releases, journalism, and general prose. Separately, in large team-authored scientific assessment reports (most visibly the IPCC), "Lead Author" is a formal, nominated role responsible for drafting a designated section of a chapter as part of a team, alongside Coordinating Lead Authors -- a role defined by section-writing and coordination responsibility, not by contribution-ranked byline position, and with no single "first author" slot at all.
Senior Author
The senior author is the byline position -- conventionally the last-listed author in fields that use a contribution-ranked author list, most consistently biomedicine and the life sciences -- understood to signal the person who supervised the research, secured its funding, and takes overall responsibility for the work's integrity, typically the laboratory head or principal investigator, as distinct from the first author, who is understood to have carried out the largest share of the hands-on experimental or analytical work. Like first-author position, senior-author position is a convention read from byline placement, not a formal authorship criterion: everyone in the position still has to independently satisfy the applicable authorship test (most commonly the ICMJE's four-part test) on the same terms as every other listed author. The convention does not apply in fields with alphabetical byline order (mathematics, economics, parts of theoretical physics), where last position carries no seniority or supervisory signal at all, and it does not automatically confer the corresponding-author role, though the two are often -- not always -- held by the same person.
Corporate Authorship
Corporate authorship is the practice of naming an organizational or collective entity -- a consortium, study group, working group, network, or corporate body -- as the author of record on a byline, in place of (or alongside) individually named researchers. It is distinguished from co-authorship by what appears on the byline itself: co-authorship is two or more named individuals who each independently meet the authorship criteria for the work, while corporate authorship substitutes or supplements those individual names with a group name that stands for the collective. The individuals who did the work still have to be identifiable and accountable -- ICMJE guidance requires the corresponding author to specify the group name and clearly identify which group members can take credit and responsibility as authors -- but the byline itself reads as the entity, not the roster.
Author Affiliation
The institutional identifier attached to a specific named author on a scholarly output, stating the organization the author was formally associated with while doing the reported work (conventionally at the time of the research, not necessarily the author's current employer), carried as structured byline metadata distinct from corresponding-author contact details or an internal CRIS affiliation record.
First Author
First author is the person listed first in a work's byline (author list). In fields that use a contribution-ranked byline -- most consistently biomedicine, the life sciences, and much of the natural sciences -- that position is a convention, not a formal criterion: it signals that this person is understood to have done the largest share of the hands-on work behind the paper, typically including the bulk of the experimental or analytical work and the first draft of the manuscript. Being listed first does not, by itself, make someone an author -- they still have to independently satisfy the applicable authorship criteria (most commonly the ICMJE's four-part test: substantial contribution to conception, design, or data; drafting or critically revising the work; final approval of the version submitted; and agreement to be accountable for it). First-author position answers a different question from that test: not "does this person qualify to be an author" but "where does this particular author's contribution rank relative to the other authors on this specific paper." It is also field-dependent rather than universal -- in mathematics, economics, and parts of theoretical physics, author order is conventionally alphabetical and carries no contribution ranking at all, so "first author" in those fields signals nothing about relative effort.
Major Contributor
A "major contributor" is an informal, functional description — not a defined category in ICMJE, NISO CRediT (ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022), or any research-integrity standard — used to describe someone whose input to a research output is substantial and broad enough that it typically meets, or is expected to meet, the threshold for authorship, as opposed to a "minor" contribution that is real but narrower and more appropriately handled through acknowledgement rather than a byline. A contribution generally reads as "major" when it (a) spans more than one narrow, delegable task — for example design plus analysis plus interpretation, not just running one requested test; (b) is difficult to substitute without changing the direction or validity of the work; and (c) is accompanied by the kind of ongoing engagement (reviewing drafts, defending choices, approving the final version) that ICMJE's four authorship criteria and most journals' own policies expect of an author, not just a task contributor.
Acknowledgments Section
The part of a scholarly manuscript, typically placed after the discussion/conclusion and before the reference list, where the corresponding author names people and entities that contributed to the work but do not meet the journal's or field's authorship criteria (most commonly ICMJE's four-part test), together with any required disclosure of funding sources and grant/award numbers. A contribution belongs here rather than on the byline when it is real but falls short of authorship on at least one prong — ICMJE's own examples include acquisition of funding, general supervision of a research group or general administrative support, and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, or proofreading. Because naming someone can be read as implying their endorsement of the paper's data and conclusions, ICMJE recommends that editors require the corresponding author to obtain each acknowledged individual's written permission before publication.
Co-First Authorship
The convention of designating two or more authors as having contributed equally to a work, typically signaled by a shared symbol (a dagger or asterisk) next to each name resolving to a footnote such as "These authors contributed equally to this work." Co-first authorship does not replace or loosen the underlying authorship test -- every co-first author must still independently meet the applicable authorship criteria (most commonly ICMJE's four-part test) -- it only clarifies that the printed byline order should not be read as a ranking of relative contribution among the marked names. It is a first-author-position-specific instance of the broader equal-contribution signalling convention covered generally by co-authorship.
Corresponding Author
The author formally designated, usually at submission, as a manuscript's single point of contact with a journal — responsible for administrative correspondence during submission and peer review, and for remaining reachable for reader queries, data requests, and correction or retraction correspondence after publication. The designation is independent of author order: it can, but need not, be the same person as the first or senior author.
Co-Authorship
The state of two or more people jointly meeting the criteria for authorship on the same output (most commonly the ICMJE's four-part test), which each co-author must satisfy independently -- co-authorship itself is not a separate authorship test but the layer of practice that governs how a qualifying group of authors is organized: byline order (contribution-ranked, alphabetical, or chronological, depending on field convention), whether an equal-contribution note is used, who is designated corresponding author (or co-corresponding authors), and, for cross-institutional teams, how each author's affiliation is listed and which institution mediates if a dispute arises. Co-authorship does not require a shared institution, funder, or country.
Authorship
The formal status of being credited, by name, as a creator of a scholarly or scientific output (an article, dataset, software package, preprint, or similar citable work) because the named person meets a publisher's or field's explicit authorship criteria -- most commonly the ICMJE's four-part test: substantial contribution to the work's conception, design, or data; drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. All four conditions must be met together (an AND test, not an OR test) -- meeting some but not all of them qualifies a person for acknowledgement, not authorship. Authorship is deliberately narrower than 'did real work on this': doing qualifying work without being listed is a form of misattribution (ghost authorship), and being listed without doing qualifying work is also a form of misattribution (gift/honorary authorship).
ANSI/NISO Z39.106-2023 (Peer Review Terminology Standard)
The ANSI/NISO standard (Z39.106-2023, Standard Terminology for Peer Review, published July 5, 2023; DOI 10.3789/ansi.niso.z39.106-2023; ISBN 978-1-950980-27-7) that gives journals and publishers a common, structured vocabulary for describing how a manuscript's peer review was actually conducted. Developed from a taxonomy first built by an STM Association working group (convened 2019, brought to NISO in 2021) and refined through public comment and publisher piloting, it organizes description around four dimensions: (1) identity transparency — e.g. single anonymized, double anonymized, all identities visible; (2) who the reviewer interacts with — e.g. editor only, author and editor; (3) what review information is published alongside the article — e.g. none, reviewer identities, review reports, decision letters; and (4) whether post-publication commenting is enabled. A journal's peer-review policy is described using Z39.106 terminology when it states a position on all four dimensions with the standard's controlled terms, rather than a single unqualified label like "blind" or "peer reviewed."
Co-corresponding author convention
The practice of designating two or more authors as jointly corresponding on a published work, each taking responsibility for post-publication communication, editorial liaison, and queries about the work, with all co-corresponding authors typically marked by a symbol in the byline.
Reviewer role typology
A controlled vocabulary for distinguishing types of peer-review activity — e.g., manuscript peer reviewer, grant reviewer, conference programme committee member, data peer reviewer, software peer reviewer, reproducibility reviewer — used to give differentiated credit for review work.
“Degree of contribution” qualifier (lead/equal/supporting)
The optional CRediT modifier that may be applied to any of the 14 CRediT roles to indicate the relative magnitude of a contributor's input: 'lead' (primary responsibility), 'equal' (co-equal with one or more others), or 'supporting' (contributed but did not lead).
Conceptualization lead vs supporting
Under the CRediT taxonomy, the distinction between the contributor who led the formulation of the overarching research question, aims, or ideas for a project (Conceptualization: lead) and those who contributed to but did not originate the conceptual framing (Conceptualization: supporting).
Funding-acquisition lead vs supporting
Under the CRediT taxonomy, the distinction between the contributor who led the funding acquisition for a research project (typically the named principal investigator on the grant) and contributors who supported but did not lead the proposal (co-investigators, named collaborators).
Methodology consultant
A specialist who provides substantive advice on research methodology — study design, sampling, instrument selection, analytic strategy, or implementation approach — to a research project on which they are not a primary investigator.
Data validator
A contributor whose role is to check the integrity, accuracy, completeness, and conformance to schema of a dataset before its use, deposit, or publication — including range checks, plausibility tests, cross-source comparison, and metadata verification.
Reproducibility reviewer
A reviewer whose specific role is to verify that the computational, analytic, or experimental procedures reported in a manuscript can be re-executed by another party using the provided code, data, and instructions, distinct from a content peer reviewer.
Domain expert advisor
A subject-matter expert (clinical, technical, policy, lived-experience) who advises a research project on questions within their expertise — typically through formal advisory boards, steering committees, or focused consultations — distinct from co-authorship or formal investigator roles.
Indigenous-knowledge holder contribution
Substantive contribution to research from Indigenous knowledge keepers, elders, or community members who hold and share traditional knowledge, ecological observations, language, or cultural expertise relevant to the research, in accordance with CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance.
Citizen-scientist contribution
Substantive contribution to research by members of the public participating as volunteers in data collection, classification, observation, analysis, or interpretation, distinct from being a study subject and distinct from professional research staff.
Patient-partner contribution (PPI)
Substantive input from patients, service users, carers, or members of the public into the design, conduct, analysis, or dissemination of health and care research — as partners in the research process rather than as study participants.
Lab leadership (supervision extension)
Substantive oversight of a research team or laboratory by a principal investigator or group leader, including scientific direction, resource allocation, mentoring, and accountability for research conduct, recognised under CRediT 'Supervision' and increasingly through narrative-CV team-leadership categories.
Equipment provision (resources extension)
The provision of specialised equipment, reagents, materials, animals, samples, or computational infrastructure that materially enabled a research output, captured under CRediT 'Resources' or in acknowledgements when the contribution does not include intellectual input on the work itself.
Open-software contribution
The development, documentation, packaging, testing, or maintenance of research software released under an open-source licence, including authoring new code, contributing to existing projects, releasing reusable libraries, or operating long-term maintenance.
Open-data contribution
The substantive work of preparing, documenting, depositing, and maintaining a research dataset in a FAIR-aligned open repository under a permissive licence, distinct from the original data collection.
Medical writer contribution
Professional writing assistance to drafting a biomedical manuscript by a person whose primary role is writing rather than research — including drafting, restructuring, language polishing, and preparing submission — disclosed transparently per Good Publication Practice (GPP) guidelines.
Statistical consultancy
Substantive statistical advice or analysis provided by a statistician to a research project — including study design, sample-size calculation, analytic plan, model selection, code, or interpretation — that materially shapes the research's quantitative findings.
Translator contribution
The intellectual work of converting a scholarly work from one natural language to another while preserving meaning, register, and technical accuracy, including the translator's own scholarly judgement on terminology, idiom, and disciplinary convention.
Mentorship contribution
Career, intellectual, or methodological guidance provided to a researcher (typically more junior) that shapes the conduct or development of their research, distinct from formal supervision (which has institutional authority) and from co-authorship (which requires direct work on the output).
Pre-submission feedback contribution
Substantive intellectual input — comments, critique, suggested revisions, or methodological advice — provided by a colleague on a draft manuscript or proposal before it is submitted to a journal or funder, recognised in acknowledgements rather than as authorship.
Editorial contribution
Intellectual work performed in the role of editor for a scholarly venue — including soliciting submissions, selecting reviewers, synthesising review feedback, making accept/reject/revise decisions, and shaping the venue's scope and standards.
Peer reviewer contribution
The intellectual labour of evaluating a scholarly submission's validity, originality, significance, and clarity for a journal, funder, or conference, distinct from authorship and from editorial decision-making.
Technical staff contribution
Substantive technical work — laboratory technique, instrument operation, data acquisition, sample preparation, software engineering, or facility operation — performed by research-support staff (technicians, engineers, lab managers) that materially enables a research output.
Non-author contributor
An individual who made a meaningful contribution to a research output but is not listed in the author byline, typically because the contribution is partial (does not meet all authorship criteria) or because they declined authorship.
Acknowledged contributor
An individual whose contribution to a research output is recognised in the acknowledgements section rather than by authorship, typically because their contribution does not meet all four ICMJE authorship criteria but is substantive enough to warrant named credit.
