Corroborating Evaluator

NIKOLAI proposal: a Corroborating Evaluator is a recognised third-party evaluator (for example, a body already named under N8's evaluator-independence element) who formally corroborates another organisation's Mapping Declaration with independent confirmation, without being the filing organisation itself. As with every N10 role, no corroboration has yet been recorded against a live declaration; this defines the role NIKOLAI would attach that corroboration to once the feature exists. This wording is a NIKOLAI editorial synthesis, not a quotation from any single source.

This is CASRAI's own proposed definition, not a definition any named organisation has agreed to. See what NIKOLAI is and is not.

Source of record

Where this definition comes from

ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 (CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy), Role definitions, Validation
“Validation: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.”
https://www.niso.org/publications/z39104-2022-credit

Divergence

Where sources materially disagree

Structurally the closest of the six to an actual CRediT role: CRediT's Validation is defined as verification, independent of the original activity, of results and outputs — the same independent-check function this role performs for a declaration instead of a research result. The analogy is functional, not definitional: NIKOLAI is not reusing CRediT's Validation wording or scope, only its structural pattern of a distinct verifying party.

Gap

Not yet a distinct step in the submission form, matching the more precise admission already made in the nikolai-v0.2 changelog: declaration_type accepts only confirm/dispute/new, with no 'corroborate' value and no field linking one declaration to another it independently confirms. This is a stronger claim than "no corroboration has been recorded yet" -- there is currently no code path that COULD record one, not merely an absence of a first real use.