An author contribution statement template is a reusable format — a CRediT checkbox grid, a free-text paragraph, or a footnote listing — that records exactly what each named author did on a manuscript, so researchers do not have to draft the disclosure from scratch for every journal. Keep one master version covering all three formats and you can adapt it to any publisher’s house style in minutes rather than hours.
An author contribution statement is a manuscript section, distinct from the author byline itself, that specifies precisely which tasks — conceiving the study, collecting data, analysing results, drafting text — each co-author performed. This guide sets out the three formats journals actually use, gives a build-once workflow for a master statement, and answers the questions authors most often ask before submission.
- What is an author contribution statement?
- The three formats journals actually use
- How to build one master statement and adapt it fast
- Frequently asked questions
- What this means for authors and institutions
What is an author contribution statement?
An author contribution statement discloses who did what on a piece of published research, separately from the order of names on the byline. It exists because author order alone is an unreliable signal: conventions differ across disciplines, some fields list contributors alphabetically, others by seniority or effort, and none of those orderings tell a reader, a funder, or a hiring committee what a specific person actually contributed.
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) ties this disclosure to four authorship criteria: substantial contribution to conception, design, data acquisition, analysis or interpretation; drafting or critically revising the work; final approval of the version published; and agreement to be accountable for its accuracy. A contribution statement is the mechanism journals use to make those criteria checkable rather than assumed.
The three formats journals actually use
Publishers do not converge on one house style. In practice, submissions land in one of three formats, and the format a journal picks determines how much structure your statement needs before you paste it in.
| Format | Used by (examples) | Structure | Degree-of-contribution field |
|---|---|---|---|
| Checkbox/grid (CRediT) | Elsevier, Wiley journals | Each author ticked against a fixed set of standardised roles | Yes — typically Lead, Equal, Supporting |
| Free-text paragraph | JMIR, Springer, AAS Journals | A short narrative sentence or two per author | Optional, author’s own wording |
| Footnote / tiered listing | Large multi-author collaborations, some society journals | Annotation on the author list itself, or grouping into contribution tiers | Sometimes, at tier level only |
The CRediT checkbox grid
The most structured option is the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT), a fixed set of 14 roles — including Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Supervision, and Writing (original draft and review & editing) — against which each author’s involvement is marked. Elsevier and Wiley both require submitting authors to complete a CRediT taxonomy grid, and many other publishers now embed the same taxonomy in their submission systems. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014. The standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, which defines the current 14 CRediT roles and their permitted degree qualifiers.
The free-text paragraph
Some journals deliberately avoid a fixed taxonomy. JMIR’s author guidance describes the Authors’ Contributions section as specifying “the exact contributions of each author in a narrative form” — an optional section, included in the final publication only if the authors provide it. The American Astronomical Society (AAS) took the same route when it introduced Author Contribution statements in AASTeX v7.0: rather than a checkbox set, it built a free-form text field, reasoning that the variety of contribution types across large collaborations — alphabetical author lists, tiered author groups, citizen-science participants — does not map cleanly onto a fixed vocabulary. AAS also notes the statement helps authors comply with funding-agency guidelines, including those of the US National Science Foundation.
The footnote or tiered listing
Large collaborations — common in astrophysics, high-energy physics, and some clinical consortia — often annotate the author list itself rather than writing a separate paragraph per person. Authors may be grouped into tiers (for example, “Authors 1–4 led the analysis and writing; Authors 5–13 contributed to interpretation”), with footnote-style superscripts marking equal contribution or joint leadership. This format trades individual granularity for the ability to credit dozens or hundreds of contributors without an unwieldy statement.
How to build one master statement and adapt it fast
Because you cannot predict in advance which format a target journal will require, the efficient approach is to draft contribution information once, at the most granular level, and derive the other formats from it rather than starting over each time.
- Draft against the 14 CRediT roles first, even if your target journal does not use CRediT — it is the most granular schema and everything else can be compressed from it.
- Record a degree-of-contribution qualifier (Lead, Equal, Supporting) for each role and each author while memories are fresh, ideally at manuscript submission rather than at revision.
- Write a one-paragraph narrative fallback by converting the CRediT grid into plain sentences — this becomes your free-text version for journals like JMIR or Springer.
- Keep a tiered/footnote version ready if you anticipate submitting to a large-collaboration venue, grouping authors by contribution level rather than role.
- Before each submission, check the target journal’s Guide for Authors and paste in whichever of the three pre-built versions matches its required format, trimming role names only where the journal’s own vocabulary differs from CRediT’s.
Store all three versions in your manuscript tracking file alongside co-author sign-off. The authorship criteria a statement must satisfy do not change between formats — only their presentation does — so a single accurate source of truth prevents the statement drifting from what actually happened as it gets re-formatted for each journal.
Frequently asked questions
How do you write an author’s contribution statement?
Write an author contribution statement by listing each author against specific, verifiable actions — using CRediT’s 14 roles where the journal requires them, or a short narrative paragraph where it does not. State the degree of contribution (Lead, Equal, Supporting) and have every co-author confirm the wording before submission.
What is the author’s contribution statement?
An author’s contribution statement is a manuscript section that specifies exactly what each named author did — conceiving the study, collecting data, analysing results, drafting or revising text — rather than relying on author-list order to imply credit. ICMJE ties this disclosure to its four authorship criteria.
What are examples of author contributions?
Typical contribution examples include Conceptualization (designing the study), Investigation (running experiments), Formal analysis (statistics), Writing – original draft, and Supervision. Under CRediT, each is tagged Lead, Equal, or Supporting per author, producing a record more granular than author order alone.
What is a contribution statement example?
A narrative example: “A.B. conceived the study and wrote the first draft. C.D. collected and analysed the data. E.F. supervised the project and acquired funding. All authors reviewed and approved the final manuscript.” A CRediT example replaces this sentence with a per-author role grid instead.
What this means for authors and institutions
For individual researchers, maintaining one detailed master statement — rather than reconstructing contributions at each submission — reduces both drafting time and the risk of inconsistent or disputed credit between co-authors. For institutions and research offices, a standard internal template that captures CRediT-level detail regardless of a given journal’s public-facing format gives promotion, tenure, and grant-reporting processes a consistent, auditable record of who did what, independent of any single publisher’s house style.
As more publishers embed CRediT directly into submission systems, free-text and footnote formats are likely to persist mainly where author-list conventions — large collaborations, alphabetical listings, citizen-science co-authorship — do not map cleanly onto a fixed taxonomy. Building your contribution record to CRediT’s granularity now, and compressing it downward per journal, is the format-agnostic way to stay ready for either direction.
