Nature’s author contributions statement is a free-text paragraph, not a structured CRediT taxonomy submission. The flagship journal requires authors to describe, in their own words and by initials, what each co-author did — while sister journals such as Nature Communications require formal CRediT role tagging at submission. Authors moving between the two must translate manually.
An author contributions statement is a short, published section of a paper — required by Nature since 1999 — that names each author’s specific role in the work, distinct from the author list itself.
- What does Nature’s author contributions statement require?
- How does this differ from the CRediT taxonomy?
- How do you translate between the two formats?
- Common questions about author contributions
- What this means for authors and institutions
What Does Nature’s Author Contributions Statement Require?
Nature has required a dedicated author contributions statement since 1999, when the journal first asked authors to say “who did what” in a short editorial note. The substance of the policy has barely changed since.
Nature’s current formatting guide instructs: “Authors are required to include a statement to specify the contributions of each co-author. The statement can be up to several sentences long, describing the tasks of individual authors referred to by their initials.” The journal’s initial-submission guidance gives the template directly: “A.P.M. ‘contributed’ Y and Z; B.T.R. ‘contributed’ Y.”
This means Nature accepts prose, not categories. There is no dropdown menu, no fixed list of roles, and no requirement to map each contribution onto a named taxonomy. Authors write a short paragraph, using initials rather than full names, describing who conceived the study, ran the experiments, analysed the data, wrote the manuscript, and supervised the work.
The corresponding author is responsible for confirming that every co-author agrees with the statement before submission — a rule set out in Nature Portfolio’s wider authorship policy, adapted from the McNutt et al. framework published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February 2018 (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1715374115).
How Does This Differ From the CRediT Taxonomy?
The CRediT contributor roles taxonomy — 14 standardised roles from Conceptualization to Funding acquisition — was originated by CASRAI in 2014 and is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. It requires authors to tag each contribution against a fixed, controlled list rather than write free prose.
Nature’s free-text paragraph and CRediT are not the same instrument, and conflating them causes avoidable submission errors. Nature itself does not ask authors to select CRediT roles; Nature Communications, a separate journal in the same portfolio, does require CRediT role selection at submission.
| Feature | Nature (flagship) | Nature Communications | CRediT-mandating journals generally |
|---|---|---|---|
| Format | Free-text paragraph | Structured role selection | Structured role selection |
| Vocabulary | Author’s own words, by initials | 14 fixed CRediT roles | 14 fixed CRediT roles |
| Machine-readable? | No | Yes | Yes |
| Governing standard | Nature editorial policy | ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 | ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 |
A 2023 Nature Communications comment by Nakagawa et al., “Method Reporting with Initials for Transparency” (DOI: 10.1038/s41467-023-37039-1), argued that CRediT’s 14 categories, while useful for crediting intellectual roles, do not clearly capture who is accountable for specific methodological choices, and proposed an initials-based supplement closer to Nature’s original format. The tension between the two systems is therefore live within the Nature Portfolio itself, not only between competing publishers.
How Do You Translate Between the Two Formats?
Authors who already hold a CRediT-tagged contributions list — from a prior submission, an institutional record, or a preprint — can convert it into Nature’s free-text format directly. Each CRediT role maps onto a plain-English clause.
- Conceptualization becomes “conceived the project” or “designed the study”.
- Investigation / Formal analysis becomes “performed the experiments” or “analysed the data”.
- Writing – original draft becomes “wrote the manuscript”; Writing – review & editing becomes “all authors commented on the manuscript”.
- Supervision becomes “supervised the project”; Funding acquisition sits in Nature’s separate funding statement, not the contributions paragraph.
- Resources, Data curation and Software fold into the relevant experimental or analytical clause rather than standing as separate categories.
Working in the other direction — turning a Nature-style narrative into CRediT tags for a later submission to a CRediT-mandating journal — takes more judgement, because free text often bundles several CRediT roles into a single clause. Institutions preparing CRediT statements for repository or grant-reporting purposes should capture each author’s roles separately at the point contributions are agreed, rather than reverse-engineering roles from a published paragraph afterwards.
Neither format determines who qualifies as an author. ICMJE’s authorship criteria — substantial contribution, drafting or critical revision, final approval, and accountability — remain the separate, higher bar that both Nature’s paragraph and CRediT tags sit underneath.
Common Questions About Author Contributions
What are examples of author contributions?
A typical Nature-style example reads: “A.B. and C.D. designed the study; E.F. collected the data; A.B. analysed the results; A.B. and E.F. wrote the manuscript; all authors reviewed and approved the final version.” Each clause names a specific task, not a generic role label, and uses initials rather than full names.
What is an author contribution in Springer Nature journals?
Across the wider Springer Nature portfolio, an author contribution statement is a required declaration of responsibility published with the paper. Some portfolio journals, including Nature Communications, mandate formal CRediT role selection at submission; the flagship Nature journal instead accepts a free-text paragraph describing each author’s specific tasks.
What are author contributions?
Author contributions are the specific, individually attributable tasks — conception, experiments, analysis, writing, supervision — that each named author performed on a research output. They are distinct from authorship eligibility itself, which under ICMJE criteria also requires drafting or critical revision, final approval, and accountability for the work.
What This Means for Authors and Institutions
Research administrators supporting multi-journal submission pipelines should treat Nature’s paragraph and CRediT tagging as two outputs of one underlying contribution record, not two separate exercises repeated from scratch. Capturing contributions in structured CRediT form first — even for a Nature submission that will not display it — makes every subsequent translation faster and reduces disputes at revision stage.
As more funders and repositories request machine-readable contributor data, the practical advantage sits with structured capture. CRediT, now governed as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, is designed for that reuse; Nature’s narrative paragraph is not, and there is no indication the flagship journal plans to change that. Authors and institutions that standardise on CRediT internally, then export a narrative version for Nature submissions, avoid doing the attribution work twice.
