Why this discipline needs its own guide
Background
Surgical research has its own reporting ecosystem: the IDEAL (Idea, Development, Exploration, Assessment, Long-term study) framework for surgical-innovation evaluation; SCARE for case reports, PROCESS for case series, and CONSORT for surgical RCTs. Authorship attribution in surgical papers needs to capture both the intellectual and the operative contribution, since the surgeon who performed the technique is often distinct from the team member who analysed outcomes.
The British Journal of Surgery, Annals of Surgery and JAMA Surgery all reference CRediT in their author guidance. The challenge in practice is distinguishing the operating surgeon’s Investigation role from the post-operative outcome analysis Investigation role, both of which are central to the work but represent distinct contributions.
Key considerations
How to assign the roles
- The operating surgeon’s contribution is Investigation (performing the intervention) and frequently Conceptualization (the surgical strategy) and Methodology (the operative technique).
- Outcome assessors who are blinded from the operating team should be recorded under Investigation and Validation; their independence is the methodological point of the design.
- Case-series papers should record Data Curation as a distinct role; assembling consecutive-case data with consistent definitions is itself substantive work.
- Surgical-trial papers should reference the IDEAL stage in the Methods and treat protocol violations as a Methodology-level consideration.
- Industry-supplied devices or instrumentation belong under Resources; the disclosure obligations for industry-funded surgical research are typically more stringent than the manufacturer’s contribution warrants in CRediT terms.
Worked example
A representative CRediT statement
Author Contributions (CRediT) Lead Surgeon, H. Aoki: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation (operative), Writing – review & editing. Co-Surgeon, K. Nakamura: Investigation (operative), Writing – review & editing. Outcomes Lead, J. Mitchell: Methodology, Investigation (outcome assessment), Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. Trial Data Manager, R. Lefebvre: Data curation, Validation. Department Head, A. Vasquez: Supervision, Writing – review & editing.
The role names above match the canonical wording at casrai.org/credit. Most publishers accept exactly this format.
Further reading
