Wiley and Elsevier both require a CRediT-based author contribution statement, but they format it differently: Wiley’s guidance lists the 14 roles alphabetically and actively encourages a “degree of contribution” qualifier (lead, equal, supporting), holding the submitting author responsible for accuracy, while Elsevier follows the original Brand et al. (2015) role order and assigns that responsibility to the corresponding author. Neither format is more “correct” — both map to the same underlying taxonomy — but the presentation, the responsible party, and what survives a manuscript transfer between the two publishers differ in ways authors and research-office staff need to know before submission.
An author contribution statement is a short, structured section — published alongside the article, typically above the acknowledgements — that lists each named author against one or more standardised contributor roles. Most large publishers, including Wiley and Elsevier, populate this section using CRediT, the Contributor Roles Taxonomy. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014, in a project that grew out of a 2012 workshop convened by Harvard University and the Wellcome Trust; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022.
- What is CRediT, and why do both publishers use it?
- How does Wiley format the contribution statement?
- How does Elsevier format the contribution statement?
- Wiley vs Elsevier: side-by-side comparison
- What happens to the statement when a manuscript transfers between publishers?
- Common questions about contribution statements
- What this means for authors and research offices
What is CRediT, and why do both publishers use it?
CRediT is a standardised taxonomy of 14 contributor roles — from Conceptualization and Methodology through to Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, and Funding acquisition — used to describe what each named author actually did on a paper. It was designed to replace vague, unverifiable author-order conventions with a checklist that any reader can audit.
Both Wiley and Elsevier adopted the same 14 roles, so the underlying vocabulary is identical across the two publishers. What differs is how each publisher instructs authors to present that vocabulary, and who signs off on its accuracy.
How does Wiley format the contribution statement?
Wiley’s author guidance presents the CRediT roles in alphabetical order (Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing) and states that the submitting author is responsible for ensuring that contributions of all authors are correct, with all co-authors expected to review and agree the assignments before submission.
Wiley’s documentation goes a step further than a bare role list: it explicitly models a “degree of contribution” qualifier appended to each role, using the terms lead, equal, or supporting. Wiley’s own worked example reads:
- Kerys Jones: Conceptualization (lead); writing – original draft (lead); formal analysis (lead); writing – review and editing (equal).
- Elisha Roberto: Software (lead); writing – review and editing (equal).
- Jinnie Wu: Conceptualization (supporting); writing – original draft (supporting); writing – review and editing (equal).
Single-author papers are not exempt: Wiley asks solo authors to complete the same statement, capturing only the roles that genuinely apply, so the format stays consistent across single- and multi-author submissions.
How does Elsevier format the contribution statement?
Elsevier’s guidance reproduces the CRediT role table in the original taxonomy order published by Brand, Allen, Altman, Hlava and Scott in Learned Publishing (2015): Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Resources, Data Curation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, Visualization, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. This is a functional grouping — design, execution, analysis, then writing and management — rather than an alphabetical list.
Elsevier assigns accuracy responsibility to the corresponding author, not the submitting author, and states plainly that the statement “will appear above the acknowledgment section of the published paper.” Its published sample statement omits degree-of-contribution qualifiers entirely, listing roles by name only:
- Zhang San: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software.
- Priya Singh: Data curation, Writing – Original draft preparation.
- Wang Wu: Visualization, Investigation.
- Sun Qi: Writing – Reviewing and Editing.
Elsevier also distributes a downloadable “Author contributions” Word template through several of its author-guidelines pages — a fill-in-the-blank form rather than prose guidance — which some Elsevier-published journals require alongside, or instead of, the free-text CRediT statement.
Wiley vs Elsevier: side-by-side comparison
The table below sets the two formats against each other on the points that matter most when preparing a submission.
| Feature | Wiley | Elsevier |
|---|---|---|
| Role source | CRediT, 14 roles, listed alphabetically in guidance | CRediT, 14 roles, listed in Brand et al. (2015) taxonomy order |
| Accuracy responsibility | Submitting author | Corresponding author |
| Degree-of-contribution qualifier | Actively modelled (lead / equal / supporting) | Not shown in the official sample; used only where a journal opts in |
| Single-author papers | Explicitly addressed — same format, relevant roles only | Not separately addressed in the core guidance |
| Supplementary form | Handled inline during submission via role-assignment fields | Downloadable Word “Author contributions” template available on several journal pages |
| Published placement | With the final article; timing tied to submission or revision stage | Explicitly “above the acknowledgment section” |
Neither publisher changes what CRediT itself means — a Methodology role describes the same activity at both houses. The difference is entirely in house style: how granular the statement looks on the page, and which named author is accountable if a dispute arises later.
What happens to the statement when a manuscript transfers between publishers?
Manuscript transfer services — cascading a rejected submission from one journal to another, sometimes across publishers — do not automatically preserve CRediT formatting. A statement written for Elsevier’s Brand-order role list with no degree qualifiers will typically need reformatting, not just re-pasting, if the paper moves to a Wiley title that expects lead/equal/supporting annotations, and vice versa.
Authors should not assume a receiving journal’s production team will silently convert the format. In practice, the corresponding or submitting author (whichever role the destination publisher assigns) should re-check the contribution statement against the new publisher’s house style before resubmission, exactly as they would re-check reference formatting or word-count limits.
Because the underlying 14 roles are identical across both publishers, no substantive re-attribution of work is required in a transfer — only the presentation layer (ordering, qualifiers, responsible-party framing) needs updating.
Common questions about contribution statements
What is an author contribution statement?
An author contribution statement is a published section listing each author’s specific role in a paper, typically using CRediT’s standardised vocabulary. It appears near the acknowledgements and is meant to give readers and editors an auditable record of who did what, replacing informal or unstated authorship conventions.
What are examples of author contributions?
Common examples map directly to CRediT roles: Conceptualization (designing the study), Investigation (running experiments or collecting data), Formal Analysis (statistical work), Writing – Original Draft, and Funding Acquisition. A single author may hold several roles at once.
What is an author contribution declaration?
An author contribution declaration is another term for the same disclosure — a formal, publisher-required statement in which authors declare their individual roles. Some journals, including several Elsevier titles, request it as a signed downloadable form rather than free text embedded in the manuscript.
What is a contribution statement example?
A typical example reads: “A.B. conceived the study and developed the theory; C.D. performed the computations and verified the analytical methods; all authors discussed the results and contributed to the final manuscript.” Wiley’s and Elsevier’s own published samples follow this pattern, differing mainly in whether a lead/equal/supporting qualifier is attached to each role.
What this means for authors and research offices
Research-office staff supporting multi-author, multi-institution teams should treat the contribution statement as a publisher-specific formatting task, not a one-time write-once document. Institutional repositories and CRIS systems that harvest CRediT data for REF-style reporting or funder compliance benefit from capturing roles in the neutral taxonomy form — independent of either publisher’s presentation layer — so the underlying data survives regardless of where a paper is eventually placed.
For corresponding and submitting authors alike, the practical rule is simple: confirm which party each publisher holds accountable, check whether degree-of-contribution qualifiers are expected, and re-verify the statement’s ordering and format every time a manuscript changes publisher — including after a transfer or a resubmission following rejection.
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