Implementation stories
Case studies
Real-world implementation stories from institutions, publishers, and CRIS vendors. Structured to support replication — not testimonial.
Case studies document concrete implementations of the dictionary and CRediT — what an institution did, what it cost in staff time, what changed measurably, what the team would do differently. The editorial brief is honest reporting, not promotional writing. A case study that surfaces a difficult lesson is worth more to a reader planning their own rollout than one that reports unbroken success.
The structure
Every case study follows the same five-section structure. The structure exists so a reader planning a comparable rollout can find the section they need without reading the whole piece, and so two case studies can be compared on the same axes.
Context
What the institution, publisher, or vendor looked like before. Size, sector, prior contributor-role practice if any, the systems already in place.
Decision and scope
Why the move was made — funder requirement, editorial policy, integrity case, vendor alignment. What was in scope and what was deferred.
Implementation
Concrete steps. Schema mapping (JATS, JSON-LD, CRIS), policy change, training, internal communication. Who did the work, what it cost in staff time.
Outcome and lessons
What changed measurably. Author-statement compliance rate, integrity-case throughput, repository deposit completeness. What the team would do differently.
Attribution
Named contributors with CRediT roles, the institution's permission to publish, the editorial-board reviewer who signed off the case study.
What we are looking for
- Journal or publisher adoption of CRediT in author submission and the resulting JATS deposit pattern. The publisher guidance pages from Elsevier, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, and SAGE sit alongside this work.
- Institutional adoption of contributorship in research-information systems — CRIS configuration, RIM workflow, repository deposit. The pattern follows the work documented at UCL, the University of Sheffield, and the University of Surrey.
- CRIS-vendor implementations — schema mapping to the dictionary, JSON-LD context generation, ORCID integration patterns.
- Integrity-office case work where the dictionary helped resolve an authorship or contribution dispute. See the work documented at the NIH Intramural Research Program as a model.
Release timeline
The first cohort of case studies ships with the v2026.2 release. Until then, this page documents the editorial structure so prospective contributors can begin drafting now.
Coming with v2026.2
If you would like to contribute a case study, write to [email protected] with a one-paragraph outline. The editorial board pairs you with a working-group reviewer.
