Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A PNAS paper published under the legacy format might carry a footnote reading: "Author contributions: A.B. and C.D. designed research; A.B. performed research; E.F. contributed new reagents; A.B. and E.F. analyzed data; and A.B. wrote the paper." (Illustrative composite, not a specific published paper.)
- Is an instance
A PNAS paper published under the current requirement would instead carry a standard CRediT statement (e.g. "Conceptualization: A.B.; Investigation: A.B., E.F.; Writing – original draft: A.B.") plus a note identifying the corresponding author as guarantor and listing their ORCID iD. (Illustrative composite.)
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A journal that only asks for a free-text "author contributions" paragraph with no fixed category list or guarantor requirement is not an instance of this term — it lacks both the structured checklist and the named-guarantor accountability mechanism that define PNAS's requirement.
Editorial commentary
PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences) was one of the first major journals to require a structured, per-author statement of contribution rather than accepting the byline alone as a record of who did what. The requirement has two parts that persist across format changes: a breakdown of who contributed which type of work, and a named guarantor — the corresponding author — who is accountable for the paper as a whole.
The legacy PNAS checklist (1995–)
Starting in 1995, PNAS asked authors to indicate their contribution against a fixed list of categories, typically printed as a footnote rather than in the main text: “Designed research,” “Performed research,” “Contributed new reagents or analytic tools,” “Analyzed data,” and “Wrote the paper.” Authors could claim more than one category, and more than one author could share a category — unlike a single first-author/corresponding-author split, the checklist was designed to make each author’s specific role visible. This predates the modern CRediT taxonomy by roughly two decades and was, at the time, one of the more granular disclosure requirements in the life sciences literature.
Corresponding author as guarantor
Alongside the checklist, PNAS policy has required that the corresponding author “be a guarantor of a significant part or all of the work,” meaning they take responsibility for the integrity of the paper as a whole, not just the sections they personally worked on. This is a real accountability mechanism distinct from anything in CRediT itself — CRediT documents who did what, but has no formal “guarantor” concept. A small number of other journals and journal families use a comparable guarantor requirement, so PNAS’s version is one instance of a broader accountability pattern rather than a unique invention, but it is the specific, sourced instance documented here.
Current policy: CRediT plus PNAS-specific requirements
PNAS’s author guidance has since moved its contribution disclosure onto the standard CRediT taxonomy (ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022) for current submissions, replacing the bespoke five-category checklist with the full 14-role vocabulary shared across most major publishers. PNAS has also added a requirement that the corresponding author hold a registered ORCID iD, alongside retaining its longstanding guarantor language. Note: this “current state” description is based on secondary reporting (journal submission-guide summaries) rather than a directly fetched primary PNAS policy page at the time of writing, so authors should confirm exact current wording against PNAS’s own author center before relying on it for a live submission.
How this differs from a generic CRediT statement
A generic CRediT author statement only records role assignments. PNAS’s requirement layers two additional, journal-specific elements onto that baseline: (1) a historical, still-cited legacy format that many readers of older PNAS papers will encounter, and (2) an explicit guarantor clause that CRediT itself does not define. This is why PNAS’s requirement is documented separately from the generic ICMJE authorship criteria and CRediT taxonomy pages — see also Author Contribution Statement and CRediT vs. ICMJE for the general frameworks this term specializes.
Related terms
References
- Rennie, D. et al., “Responsible authorship of papers in PNAS” (PMC489963, NIH-hosted).
- ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy.
- PNAS Author Center policy summary (secondary reporting — not independently fetched at time of writing).
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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