Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A biostatistician who performed a single specific test on request and is acknowledged but not authoring
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A guest author with no actual contribution included to inflate the author list (this is honorary authorship, an integrity violation, not a legitimate non-author contributor)
Editorial commentary
A non-author contributor made a real contribution to a research output but does not appear in the author byline — either because the contribution is partial and does not satisfy all four ICMJE authorship criteria, or because the person was offered authorship and declined it. This is a status, not a single mechanism: credit can still be given through acknowledgements, a CRediT contributor-role listing that publishers increasingly separate from the “author” list, or a dedicated contributions statement.
How it differs from related terms: Acknowledged contributor is the specific, narrower case where credit is given via the acknowledgements section; a non-author contributor may instead be listed under a CRediT role such as Data curation or Resources without meeting ICMJE’s authorship bar for that same paper. Specific non-author roles documented separately on this site include technical staff, patient partners, and citizen scientists.
The line matters because miscategorising it runs in both directions: omitting a real contributor from any credit at all under-recognises their work, while padding the byline with someone who made no contribution is honorary or gift authorship — a research-integrity violation, not a legitimate use of this category.
References
- NISO CRediT Standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022
- ICMJE Recommendations, “Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors”
Also known as
Sub-authorship contributor · Below-threshold contributor
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Non-author contributor"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/non-author-contributor" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/non-author-contributor",
"name": "Non-author contributor",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/non-author-contributor",
"description": "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.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/credit-extensions#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/non-author-contributor",
"alternateName": [
"Sub-authorship contributor",
"Below-threshold contributor"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T01:57:55",
"dateModified": "2026-09-05T14:21:54",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
