Contributor roles in biomedical research

Biomedical research is the discipline where CRediT was forged and where its 14-role scaffold maps most cleanly. The original 2012 Harvard / Wellcome workshop convened journal editors and biomedical funders, and the role definitions reflect the contribution patterns of laboratory and translational science: wet-lab investigation, formal analysis of structured datasets, methodology development, software pipelines, and the layered supervision typical of postdoc-led projects in a senior PI’s laboratory.

In biomedical contexts the CRediT statement sits alongside the ICMJE Vancouver criteria. ICMJE decides who qualifies as an author; CRediT records what each of those authors did. The two documents are complementary, not competing, and the major medical journals — Nature, Cell, NEJM, Lancet, BMJ, JAMA — now expect both.

• Wet-lab work is captured under Investigation. Distinguish this from Methodology (designing the protocol) and Resources (providing reagents, cell lines or animals).
• Imaging, sequencing, mass spectrometry and microscopy work that involves substantive parameter tuning belongs under Methodology and Investigation rather than Resources.
• Statistical analysis is Formal Analysis. If the statistician was acknowledged rather than named as an author, add a separate Acknowledgements paragraph naming the individual and the work performed.
• Bioinformatics pipelines and custom code belong under Software. Reuse of a published pipeline without modification belongs under Resources.
• Supervision is reserved for the team member(s) with oversight and leadership responsibility, typically the senior PI(s) on the grant.
• Funding Acquisition under ICMJE is not, on its own, sufficient for authorship. Record it where it applies; do not let it stand in for substantive contribution.