Why this discipline needs its own guide
Background
Epidemiology sits between the structured trials world and the more interpretive social-science world. A typical observational study involves a small core team that defines the exposure and outcome variables, a larger team that curates and harmonises data from registries or biobanks, a statistician (often shared across studies) and clinical-discipline experts who anchor the substantive interpretation. CRediT maps reasonably onto that structure provided Data Curation is recognised as the substantive role it is.
Reporting against the STROBE checklist (or its disease-specific variants such as RECORD for routinely collected health data) supplements but does not replace the contributor statement. Pre-registration of the analysis plan on the Open Science Framework or in a journal-specific Registered Report is increasingly expected and is recorded under Methodology.
Key considerations
How to assign the roles
- Data Curation in epidemiology is substantial: harmonising variables across cohorts, defining inclusion windows, deriving phenotypes from coded health-record data. Name the contributors who did this work.
- Linkage of routine health-record datasets carries governance obligations that are themselves a Methodology contribution, not just a Resources one.
- Sensitivity analyses, multiple-imputation schemes and instrumental-variable approaches are Formal Analysis. Where these were pre-specified versus post-hoc, the manuscript should state so but the CRediT role does not change.
- Cohort principal investigators who provide access to the underlying data without further intellectual contribution belong under Resources, not Investigation.
- For meta-analyses, the protocol registration (PROSPERO) and the search strategy belong under Methodology; screening and extraction are Investigation; analysis is Formal Analysis.
Worked example
A representative CRediT statement
Author Contributions (CRediT) S. Kowalski: Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. R. Mehta: Methodology, Data curation, Software. M. Ndiaye: Data curation, Investigation. J. Park: Formal analysis, Visualization. A. Bianchi: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Pre-registered analysis plan: OSF osf.io/XXXXX.
The role names above match the canonical wording at casrai.org/credit. Most publishers accept exactly this format.
Further reading
