Submission infrastructure

Submission system integration

The submission system is the chokepoint for CRediT adoption. Until authors are presented with a structured role picker, no amount of policy support converts into the structured metadata that propagates downstream.

A publisher can endorse CRediT in policy, in its instructions-to-authors page, and in its house style guide, and still emit no structured CRediT data. The reason is the submission system: unless the workflow presents authors with a controlled-vocabulary role picker at submission time, the captured contribution data lands as free text in the manuscript and the structured-metadata pipeline never starts. The CRediT adoption landscape documents how widespread this implementation gap is even among publishers that claim full CRediT support.

The pages below set out the five major submission systems, what each supports natively, and how to enable structured CRediT capture for a given journal. The corresponding downstream guides — for JATS XML output, for Crossref deposit (5.5 schema), for ORCID propagation — cover what happens after submission.

Vendor-by-vendor

The five major submission systems

Editorial Manager

Aries Systems (Elsevier)

What it supports: Full CRediT support, structured at submission. Authors select roles from a controlled-vocabulary picker; the selection emits in JATS XML downstream and propagates to the Crossref deposit if the publisher's workflow is configured to include it.
How to enable: Editorial Manager is configured per journal by the publisher administrator through the Submission Items module. Add the CRediT contributor-roles step to the workflow; map the field to the JATS <role> element in the export configuration; ensure the Crossref deposit profile includes the contributor_role element.
Where you'll see it: The de facto biomedical and engineering submission system. Used across Elsevier, Springer Nature, Cell Press, and a long tail of society publishers. Most major medical journals run on Editorial Manager.

ScholarOne Manuscripts

Clarivate

What it supports: CRediT support via the contributor-roles configuration. Wiley, Taylor & Francis, OUP, SAGE and many societies use the integration. Structured capture at submission is configurable per journal.
How to enable: The publisher's ScholarOne administrator enables the CRediT field set in the configuration tool. Map the selected roles to the JATS <role> output and the Crossref deposit; the export configuration carries the canonical NISO URIs.
Where you'll see it: Strong adoption across Wiley, T&F, OUP, SAGE and the society-press portfolio. The dominant submission system for the humanities and social-science journals that have adopted CRediT.

PubSweet / Coko

Coko Foundation (open-source)

What it supports: CRediT-aware open-source submission stack. The eLife implementation is the reference case; the underlying React-based component model makes CRediT integration relatively clean.
How to enable: PubSweet is component-based; the CRediT widget is available in the eLife fork. Implementers building on the upstream PubSweet pull in the CRediT module from the eLife codebase or implement against the same JATS contract.
Where you'll see it: eLife, a small number of other open-source publisher deployments, and a growing share of new-launch open-access platforms favouring open infrastructure.

Open Journal Systems (OJS)

Public Knowledge Project (open-source)

What it supports: CRediT plugin available since 2022; widely adopted in the OJS 3.3+ release line. Particularly important for the OJS-hosted journals across SciELO, AJOL and the global-south open-access ecosystem.
How to enable: Journal manager installs the CRediT plugin from the PKP gallery; configures the contributor-roles step in the submission workflow; and ensures the JATS export includes the role attributes. The plugin is maintained by the PKP community and is the path of least resistance for small-publisher OJS deployments.
Where you'll see it: Thousands of small and global-south journals run on OJS. The CRediT plugin is the single largest equity intervention in the CRediT adoption pipeline.

Scholastica

Scholastica (independent)

What it supports: CRediT-aware with structured JATS export. Widely used by open-access law-review and library-published journals.
How to enable: Scholastica enables CRediT capture at the journal-configuration level. JATS export carries the role attributes with NISO URIs; the publisher configures the Crossref deposit profile separately.
Where you'll see it: Open-access law reviews, library-published journals, and a growing share of new-launch independent journals favouring lower-cost infrastructure.

The five-step end-to-end check

The author is presented with a CRediT role picker at submission — not asked to write a free-text paragraph.
The captured roles emit in JATS XML using the <role> element with the canonical NISO URI. See the JATS guide.
The roles are included in the Crossref deposit via the contributor_role element (schema 5.5+).
The publisher’s ORCID push includes the contribution roles, so they appear on the author’s ORCID record.
The publisher’s implementation is auditable: the publisher scorecard documents who completes each step.