CASRAI Dictionary

Category: Guides & Explainers

Practical how-to guides, templates, checklists, and career pathways for research administrators, authors, and institutional teams.

  • BioRxiv ISSN Explained: Why It’s Not a Journal

    BioRxiv holds ISSN 2692-8205, but an ISSN is a serial-registration number, not proof of peer review. BioRxiv is a preprint repository, not a peer-reviewed journal: it has no Scimago Journal Rank, no Scopus record and no impact factor, because those metrics apply only to indexed journals, and bioRxiv does not perform peer review.

    BioRxiv is an open-access preprint repository for the biological sciences, launched in November 2013 by John Inglis and Richard Sever and now operated by the nonprofit openRxiv. Confusion about its status is common because bioRxiv looks and behaves like a journal platform — it has a citable DOI, a formal ISSN and a Wikipedia entry — while lacking the editorial infrastructure that “indexing” actually measures.

    Does bioRxiv have an ISSN, and what does that prove?

    BioRxiv is registered with ISSN 2692-8205, listed in the ISSN Portal and cross-referenced in the NLM Catalog under record ID 101680187, where the U.S. National Library of Medicine lists its electronic ISSN and title abbreviation “bioRxiv: the preprint server for biology”. An ISSN is issued by the ISSN International Centre to any continuing resource — journals, newspapers, monograph series, and repositories that publish serially.

    Holding an ISSN confirms only that a publication is a recognised, ongoing serial with a stable identity. It carries no implication about peer review, editorial oversight, or scholarly indexing. Many predatory journals and informal newsletters also carry valid ISSNs, which is precisely why the number is frequently mistaken for a quality signal.

    Is bioRxiv indexed in Scimago or Scopus?

    No. Scimago Journal & Country Rank derives its rankings exclusively from the Scopus citation database, which indexes peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings and book series — not preprint servers. Because bioRxiv preprints are not peer-reviewed at the point of posting, they fall outside Scopus’s inclusion criteria, and bioRxiv correspondingly has no Scimago Journal Rank (SJR) or quartile ranking.

    Search results that appear to show “bioRxiv” scientometric profiles, such as third-party aggregator pages listing publication and citation counts, are counting citations to the individual preprints hosted on the platform, not a journal-level metric assigned to bioRxiv itself. This distinction matters for anyone assessing where a piece of research sits in the scholarly record.

    ISSN record vs. Scimago-indexed journal
    Attribute bioRxiv (ISSN 2692-8205) Typical Scimago/Scopus-indexed journal
    Peer review before posting No — basic screening only Yes — mandatory
    ISSN Yes Yes
    Scopus/Scimago listing No Yes (if indexed)
    Impact factor / SJR None Assigned annually
    Editorial board with reject/accept decisions No Yes
    DOI registration Yes, via Crossref (prefix 10.1101) Yes, via Crossref or DataCite

    What does bioRxiv’s Wikipedia entry actually describe?

    The Wikipedia article for bioRxiv describes it plainly as “an open access preprint repository for the biological sciences”, founded by John Inglis and Richard Sever in November 2013 and inspired by arXiv, the physics and mathematics preprint server launched by Paul Ginsparg in 1991. The entry documents bioRxiv’s ownership history in detail: it was hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) until 11 March 2025, when ownership transferred to openRxiv, a newly formed nonprofit created to run bioRxiv and its clinical-sciences counterpart, medRxiv.

    Nowhere does the entry describe bioRxiv as a peer-reviewed journal. It explicitly notes that submissions “undergo a basic scrutinisation process, which includes safeguarding checks, an automated plagiarism screening and an assessment of appropriateness” — a moderation gate, not editorial peer review. The article also cites a 2019 eLife meta-research study (Abdill and Blekhman) finding that roughly two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints are subsequently published in peer-reviewed journals, underscoring that bioRxiv functions as a pre-publication staging ground rather than a publication venue in its own right.

    Is bioRxiv a journal, and what does “indexing” really mean?

    BioRxiv is not a journal. In scholarly-communication terms, “indexing” means a database such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed or the Directory of Open Access Journals has evaluated a title against inclusion criteria — regular publication schedule, peer review, editorial governance, ethical standards — and added its articles to a searchable, citation-tracked index. bioRxiv preprints are discoverable and citable via Google Scholar, PubMed Central (in some cases) and their own DOIs, but that is discovery, not journal indexing.

    • ISSN registration confirms serial identity only.
    • DOI registration (via Crossref) confirms a persistent, citable identifier for a specific preprint version.
    • Scopus/Web of Science indexing confirms a journal has passed a database’s editorial and peer-review vetting process.
    • Scimago/impact factor are journal-level citation metrics computed only for indexed journals — bioRxiv has neither.

    The bioRxiv-to-Journals (B2J) initiative, which by May 2020 allowed authors at 177 participating journals to submit a posted preprint directly into a journal’s manuscript system, illustrates the actual relationship: bioRxiv is a feeder and archive that sits upstream of formal, indexed publication, not a substitute for it. For definitions of related scholarly-communication terms, see the CASRAI Dictionary.

    Answer-first Q&A

    Does bioRxiv have an ISSN?

    Yes. BioRxiv holds ISSN 2692-8205, registered with the ISSN International Centre and cross-listed in the NLM Catalog (record 101680187). An ISSN is a serial-identification number confirming bioRxiv is a continuing publication series — it does not certify that content has passed peer review or editorial vetting.

    Is bioRxiv considered a journal?

    No. BioRxiv is a preprint repository, not a peer-reviewed journal. Submissions undergo only basic screening for plagiarism, safeguarding and appropriateness, not scientific peer review. A 2019 eLife study found roughly two-thirds of bioRxiv preprints are later published in peer-reviewed journals.

    Is bioRxiv a publisher?

    BioRxiv describes itself as an archive and distribution service, operated by the nonprofit openRxiv since March 2025 (previously hosted by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory). It distributes manuscripts rather than publishing them editorially — authors remain free to submit the same work to a journal afterwards.

    How do you cite bioRxiv?

    Cite bioRxiv preprints using their DOI (prefix 10.1101, registered via Crossref), per bioRxiv’s own FAQ guidance. If multiple versions exist, cite the version-specific URL. ICMJE-aligned journals typically require the citation to flag the work explicitly as a preprint, unlike a peer-reviewed indexed article.

    What this means for authors and institutions

    For research administrators and institutional leaders verifying publication records, the practical takeaway is definitive: a bioRxiv deposit is not equivalent to a peer-reviewed, indexed publication for the purposes of research assessment exercises, promotion dossiers, or funder reporting, regardless of how citable or ISSN-bearing the platform is. Research administration teams verifying publication records for compliance purposes should treat a bioRxiv ISSN or DOI as evidence of deposit and discoverability, not as evidence of peer review or journal-level standing.

    Authors should continue citing bioRxiv preprints by DOI, clearly labelled as preprints, and should track whether a peer-reviewed version has since appeared in an indexed journal — since roughly two-thirds eventually do. Terminology precision matters here: conflating “has an ISSN” with “is indexed” or “is a journal” produces avoidable errors in CVs, grant reports and library catalogues. As preprint servers proliferate across disciplines, the ISSN-versus-indexing distinction bioRxiv illustrates will only become more relevant to how research administrators, publishers and funders classify the scholarly record.

  • Author Contribution Statement: Springer Example

    A Springer author contribution statement is a short, mandatory “Declarations” entry that names every author and describes what each one did, typically drafted in free-running prose rather than a checkbox grid. Springer bases the requirement on ICMJE’s four authorship criteria; CRediT’s 14 role labels are not a mandatory field on Springer-branded journals but can be woven into the required prose, and this guide shows exactly how, with a worked four-author example.

    An author contribution statement is a manuscript section, usually placed inside “Declarations” just before the reference list, that records the specific intellectual and practical work each named author contributed to a published paper.

    What Springer Actually Requires

    Springer Nature’s journal-policies page states plainly that “Springer portfolio journals encourage transparency by publishing author contribution statements” and that “authors are required to include a statement of responsibility in the manuscript, including review-type articles, that specifies the contribution of every author.” That single clause settles a common point of confusion: review articles are not exempt.

    The policy is explicitly built on two sources: the ICMJE authorship criteria and McNutt et al.’s “Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication” (PNAS, 27 February 2018, DOI 10.1073/pnas.1715374115). Neither source mandates CRediT’s taxonomy — a distinction that matters for how you draft the statement, covered below.

    • All named authors must meet ICMJE’s four criteria: substantial contribution to conception/design or data acquisition/analysis; drafting or critical revision; final approval; and accountability for accuracy and integrity.
    • The statement is required for every manuscript type Springer publishes, including reviews, not just original research.
    • Springer permits two special designations within the statement: authors who “contributed equally” and co-authors who “jointly supervised the work.”

    Springer’s Standard Template Wording, and Where It Sits

    The statement belongs inside a section headed “Declarations,” positioned immediately before the reference list, alongside Funding, Conflicts of interest, Ethics approval, Consent, and Data/Code availability. Springer’s own Instructions for Authors documents supply sample wording that authors are told to “revise/customize” rather than copy verbatim.

    The most widely used Springer template, drawn from its Instructions for Authors and repeated across journal updates such as Applied Physics A, reads:

    Element Standard Springer wording
    Design “All authors contributed to the study conception and design.”
    Execution “Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [full name], [full name] and [full name].”
    Drafting “The first draft of the manuscript was written by [full name] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript.”
    Approval “All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”

    This four-line skeleton satisfies ICMJE’s criteria without naming a single CRediT role. It works well for small, tightly collaborative teams where the contribution split is not granular.

    Mapping CRediT’s 14 Roles onto Springer’s Prose

    CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014; it is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. CRediT defines 14 discrete roles — Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft, and Writing – Review & Editing.

    Springer-branded journals do not run a mandatory CRediT dropdown at submission the way some other publisher platforms do; their policy language references ICMJE and the McNutt framework, not the CRediT taxonomy by name. That does not stop you from using CRediT vocabulary inside the required free-text Declarations paragraph — Springer’s guidance explicitly says the level of detail “varies” by discipline, which leaves room for a granular, role-labelled statement. The table below maps each CRediT role to the Springer template language it most naturally replaces.

    CRediT role Where it slots into Springer’s statement
    Conceptualization “contributed to the study conception and design”
    Methodology “contributed to the study conception and design”
    Investigation “material preparation, data collection”
    Formal Analysis “…and analysis were performed by”
    Data Curation “data collection and analysis”
    Writing – Original Draft “the first draft of the manuscript was written by”
    Writing – Review & Editing “all authors commented on previous versions”
    Supervision, Funding Acquisition, Project Administration added as a separate sentence naming the senior/corresponding author

    A Worked Four-Author Example

    Consider a four-author manuscript by A. Osei, B. Farrell, C. Nakamura, and D. Osei (senior/corresponding author), submitted to a Springer-branded journal. A Declarations entry combining Springer’s expected phrasing with explicit CRediT labelling reads:

    “Author contributions: A. Osei and D. Osei contributed to the study conception and design (Conceptualization, Methodology). Material preparation and data collection were performed by A. Osei and C. Nakamura (Investigation, Resources); formal analysis was performed by B. Farrell (Formal Analysis, Data Curation). The first draft of the manuscript was written by A. Osei (Writing – Original Draft) and all authors commented on and revised previous versions (Writing – Review & Editing). D. Osei acquired funding and supervised the project (Funding Acquisition, Supervision, Project Administration). All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”

    This single paragraph satisfies Springer’s ICMJE-derived requirement, sits correctly under the “Declarations” heading, and gives an editor, funder, or reader the granular CRediT-style detail that the plain four-line template omits — without inventing a field Springer does not have.

    Equal Contributions, Review Articles, and Group Authorship

    Three situations trip up first-time Springer authors most often.

    • Equal contributions: Springer permits a footnote or Declarations sentence naming authors who “contributed equally to the work,” distinct from any CRediT role.
    • Review articles: Springer’s journal-policies page names review-type articles explicitly — a synthesis or narrative review still requires a full statement of responsibility, even where no new data was generated.
    • Group/collaboration authorship: Where a consortium or working group is listed, the statement should name the individuals who led analysis and writing, then reference the group’s own authorship agreement for the remainder, following the same logic ICMJE applies to large collaborations.

    Answer-First Q&A

    What is the author contribution statement in Springer?

    It is a mandatory Declarations section entry, required on every Springer-branded manuscript including reviews, that names each author and states their specific contribution. Springer bases the requirement on ICMJE’s four authorship criteria and the McNutt et al. (2018) PNAS framework, not on a structured CRediT checkbox.

    What are examples of author contributions?

    Typical contributions include conception and design, data acquisition or analysis, drafting the manuscript, and critical revision — the four categories ICMJE requires every listed author to meet. CRediT’s 14 roles (Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft, and so on) offer a more granular vocabulary for describing the same work.

    How do you write an author’s contribution?

    Name every author using consistent initials or full names, state what each person specifically did (design, data collection, analysis, writing, supervision), and confirm that all authors read and approved the final manuscript. Keep the wording proportionate to discipline norms — concise for tightly collaborative teams, more granular for large or multi-role projects.

    Implications and What to Check Before Submission

    Institutions and research offices reviewing manuscripts before submission should check three things: the statement sits under “Declarations,” it names every listed author without exception, and its wording actually satisfies ICMJE’s four criteria rather than merely restating author order. Editors increasingly cross-reference contribution statements against authorship disputes and against funder compliance requirements, so vague or missing statements create downstream friction at proofing and post-publication correction stages.

    As more publishers move toward structured CRediT fields at submission, Springer-branded journals’ free-text convention is likely to converge with that model over time. Until then, the safest approach for authors is the one shown above: satisfy Springer’s exact phrasing requirement first, then layer in CRediT’s role vocabulary for the added precision institutions, funders, and readers increasingly expect. For the full role definitions referenced here, see the CRediT contributor roles reference and the broader CRediT taxonomy overview; for related authorship-order and eligibility conventions, see authorship guidance.

  • CRediT Taxonomy Author Contributions & ORCID: Linking Roles to Identifiers

    ORCID iDs supply the verified identity, and the CRediT contributor role taxonomy supplies the verified action — publishers deposit both together in Crossref and DataCite metadata, which then push the paired role and identifier straight into each contributor’s ORCID record. That two-way link is what closes the loop between “who contributed” and “who this person verifiably is”.

    Recording credit taxonomy author contributions is only half of a durable scholarly record. Without a persistent identifier attached to each role, a contribution statement is just free text — unverifiable, unsearchable, and impossible to reconcile across a researcher’s career. CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a controlled vocabulary of 14 standardised roles — such as Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, and Writing – original draft — used to describe the specific contributions individuals make to a research output. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. This article is a developer-facing walkthrough of how ORCID, Crossref, DataCite, and JATS XML combine to make each role machine-readable and identity-verified.

    An ORCID iD is a persistent digital identifier that distinguishes one researcher from every other researcher sharing a name, institution, or field. On its own, a CRediT role is just a label — “Formal analysis” attached to a name string carries no guarantee that the name string maps to one real, disambiguated person. Pairing the two closes that gap: the role states what was done, the ORCID iD verifies who did it.

    This matters for three distinct audiences. Institutions use role-plus-identity data to evidence individual contribution in tenure and promotion files, particularly for early-career researchers whose specific input is otherwise buried in a long author list. Funders use it to trace who performed which type of work across grant-funded outputs. Publishers and infrastructure providers — Crossref, DataCite, JATS4R — use it to keep the scholarly record machine-readable rather than dependent on parsing free-text acknowledgements.

    How does an ORCID iD get attached to a CRediT role?

    The attachment happens at the manuscript-submission stage, not after the fact. When an author submits to a participating journal, the manuscript submission system (MSS) requires each co-author’s authenticated ORCID iD and asks the submitting or corresponding author to assign one or more of the 14 CRediT roles to every contributor. All named contributors are expected to review and agree their assigned roles before the manuscript proceeds.

    CRediT has been integrated into Aries Systems’ Editorial Manager since 2016 and into Clarivate’s ScholarOne Manuscripts since 2018, and is available as a free plug-in for the Public Knowledge Project’s Open Journal Systems (OJS). Two optional refinements are supported but not mandatory under the CRediT standard itself: an individual can hold more than one role, the same role can be assigned to multiple individuals, and a publisher may optionally record a “degree of contribution” — lead, equal, or supporting — where several people share a role.

    Note that CRediT does not define authorship. It describes the specific contributions made to a research output and is designed to complement, not replace, authorship criteria such as those set out by the ICMJE.

    Developer reference: CRediT role IDs

    For machine-to-machine interoperability, each of the 14 CRediT roles carries its own persistent role identifier (a UUID), issued by NISO. These IDs — not the plain-text role labels — are what should be embedded in JATS XML markup and passed through the Crossref/DataCite metadata pipeline alongside the contributor’s ORCID iD.

    CRediT role Persistent role ID (UUID)
    Conceptualization 8b73531f-db56-4914-9502-4cc4d4d8ed73
    Data curation f93e0f44-f2a4-4ea1-824a-4e0853b05c9d
    Formal analysis 95394cbd-4dc8-4735-b589-7e5f9e622b3f
    Funding acquisition 34ff6d68-132f-4438-a1f4-fba61ccf364a
    Investigation 2451924d-425e-4778-9f4c-36c848ca70c2
    Methodology f21e2be9-4e38-4ab7-8691-d6f72d5d5843
    Project administration a693fe76-ea33-49ad-9dcc-5e4f3ac5f938
    Resources ebd781f0-bf79-492c-ac21-b31b9c3c990c
    Software f89c5233-01b0-4778-93e9-cc7d107aa2c8
    Supervision 0c8ca7d4-06ad-4527-9cea-a8801fcb8746
    Validation 4b1bf348-faf2-4fc4-bd66-4cd3a84b9d44
    Visualization 76b9d56a-e430-4e0a-84c9-59c11be343ae
    Writing – original draft 43ebbd94-98b4-42f1-866b-c930cef228ca
    Writing – review & editing d3aead86-f2a2-47f7-bb99-79de6421164d

    The JATS4R (JATS for Reuse) working group, a NISO initiative, publishes best-practice guidance for tagging these role IDs inside <contrib> elements in JATS XML, ideally under JATS 1.2 (JATS 1.1 can still carry CRediT tagging with minor adaptation). Marking up role and ORCID iD together at the XML level — rather than only in human-readable HTML — is the step that makes the taxonomy queryable at scale.

    What happens to CRediT data after publication?

    Once a manuscript is accepted, the publisher deposits the authenticated ORCID iDs and assigned CRediT roles inside the article’s metadata record. That record goes to Crossref for journal articles and books, and to DataCite for datasets and other non-article outputs. Crossref’s own strategy roadmap confirms that CRediT role fields are being added to its metadata schema for publisher deposit in 2026, extending machine-readable contribution data beyond the publishers who currently support it only through their own MSS integrations.

    Both Crossref and DataCite maintain an auto-update integration with ORCID: once metadata is deposited and the researcher has granted permission, the publication record — including the specific CRediT role — is pushed automatically into the contributor’s ORCID record. No manual re-entry is required. Where a publication predates this pipeline, or where a publisher does not yet support automated deposit, a researcher can add the CRediT role to a work already listed on their ORCID record manually.

    Common questions about ORCID and CRediT

    What are the 14 CRediT contributor roles?

    The 14 CRediT roles are Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, and Writing – review & editing. Each carries its own persistent role ID for machine-readable tagging in JATS XML and Crossref/DataCite metadata.

    Do CRediT roles count as authorship?

    No. CRediT is not designed to determine authorship. It describes specific contributions to a research output and is intended to complement, not replace, authorship frameworks such as the ICMJE criteria. A contributor can hold a CRediT role — for example, Data curation — without meeting the separate threshold for authorship credit.

    How do I list author contributions?

    Assign one or more CRediT roles to every contributor, agree the assignments with all co-authors before submission, and, where the journal supports it, attach each contributor’s authenticated ORCID iD in the manuscript submission system so the roles are captured in structured, machine-readable metadata rather than free text.

    What should substantial contributions include to be credited as an author?

    Under ICMJE criteria, authorship requires substantial contribution to the work’s conception, design, data acquisition, analysis, or interpretation; drafting or critically revising it; final approval of the published version; and agreement to be accountable for its accuracy and integrity — all four criteria together, not any one alone.

    Implications and what’s next

    For institutions and research offices, the practical implication is straightforward: an ORCID iD without linked CRediT roles, or CRediT roles recorded only as prose in an acknowledgements paragraph, both fall short of a queryable contribution record. Research administrators evaluating authorship disputes or preparing tenure files should request the structured, role-tagged version wherever a publisher offers it.

    For developers and publishing-systems teams, the near-term action is to track Crossref’s 2026 metadata-schema rollout and adopt JATS4R’s tagging guidance now, so that role-plus-identifier pairs are captured at first deposit rather than retrofitted. As more manuscript submission systems and repositories adopt this pairing by default, the taxonomy’s original purpose — a transparent, disambiguated account of who did what — becomes something search and assessment systems can actually query, not just something a human reader can parse. Further background on the taxonomy’s individual roles is available in CASRAI’s CRediT roles reference and the broader CRediT hub.

  • CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy: A PhD Student’s Guide to the 14 Roles

    The CRediT contributor roles taxonomy is a 14-role standardised vocabulary that names, precisely, what each person contributed to a research output — from Conceptualization and Investigation through to Writing – Original Draft and Supervision. For a PhD student assembling a first author contribution statement, the taxonomy replaces vague author-order conventions with an auditable, role-by-role record. Get it right and every collaborator, including your supervisor, is credited accurately; get it wrong — by over-claiming roles you did not perform, or omitting supervision entirely — and the statement can misrepresent the research record.

    CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014. The standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, and journals including Elsevier, Wiley and Taylor & Francis have required or offered CRediT statements since 2015. This guide is written for doctoral and early-career researchers who are completing their first CRediT statement and need to know, specifically, where first-time authors go wrong.

    What Is the CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy?

    The CRediT contributor roles taxonomy is a controlled vocabulary of 14 defined roles used to describe the specific contributions each named author made to a research output. CRediT does not determine authorship — publishers apply separate authorship criteria, such as the four conditions set by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and CRediT is layered on top once authorship has already been agreed.

    Each role can be assigned to more than one contributor, and one contributor can hold several roles. Many journals also let you record a degree of contribution — lead, equal, or supporting — alongside each role, which is particularly useful when a supervisor and a PhD student both contributed to the same role in different measures.

    For a first-time author, the practical implication is this: a CRediT statement is a factual record, not a courtesy credit. Every role you list should map to work you can actually describe if a co-author, editor, or your own supervisor asks you to justify it.

    The 14 CRediT Roles Explained for First-Time Authors

    The table below gives the official NISO definition for each role alongside a plain-language example of the kind of task a PhD student, rather than a principal investigator, typically performs under that role.

    CRediT Role Official Definition (NISO) Typical PhD-Student Example
    Conceptualization Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims. Proposing a specific sub-question within a supervisor’s wider research programme.
    Data Curation Management activities to annotate, scrub, and maintain data for initial and later re-use. Cleaning and documenting a dataset for deposit in a repository.
    Formal Analysis Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques. Running the statistical models and interpreting the output.
    Funding Acquisition Acquisition of the financial support for the project. Rarely a student role — usually the supervisor or grant-holder.
    Investigation Conducting the research and investigation process, including experiments or data collection. Running experiments, fieldwork, or interviews.
    Methodology Development or design of methodology; creation of models. Designing the study protocol under supervisory guidance.
    Project Administration Management and coordination responsibility for research activity planning and execution. Coordinating timelines with collaborators or a laboratory.
    Resources Provision of study materials, reagents, patients, samples, instrumentation, or tools. Sourcing samples, reagents, or specialist software licences.
    Software Programming, software development, and testing of code. Writing the analysis scripts or a data-processing pipeline.
    Supervision Oversight and leadership responsibility for research activity, including mentorship. Almost always the PI or supervisor — rarely the PhD student.
    Validation Verification of the overall replication or reproducibility of results. Re-running key analyses to confirm results before submission.
    Visualization Preparation of the published work, specifically data visualisation and presentation. Building the figures and charts for the manuscript.
    Writing – Original Draft Preparation of the initial draft, including substantive translation. Writing the first full draft of the manuscript.
    Writing – Review & Editing Critical review, commentary, or revision, including pre- or post-publication stages. Revising drafts after supervisor and co-author feedback.

    The Most Common CRediT Mistakes First-Time Authors Make

    First-time authors tend to make the same handful of errors, and most of them stem from completing the statement alone, at the last minute, without checking definitions against actual tasks performed.

    • Over-claiming Conceptualization or Funding Acquisition. If the research question, hypothesis, or grant came from your supervisor’s existing programme, the honest role is more often Investigation, Methodology, or Formal Analysis — not Conceptualization.
    • Omitting Supervision entirely. Because the student usually drafts the statement, the supervisor’s oversight and mentorship role is frequently left off. NISO’s definition explicitly covers “mentorship external to the core team” — this is a distinct, real contribution that should be recorded, not assumed.
    • Role inflation — listing every role “to be safe”. CRediT exists to make contributions legible, not to maximise how many roles appear next to your name. Claim only roles you can substantiate.
    • Conflating CRediT roles with authorship qualification. NISO states plainly that CRediT is not designed to determine authorship; a role in the taxonomy is not equivalent to meeting ICMJE’s four authorship criteria.
    • Finalising the statement without co-author sign-off. Wiley’s author guidance places responsibility on the submitting author to ensure all co-authors have reviewed and agreed their roles — skipping this step is a common source of later disputes.
    • Confusing the two writing roles. Writing the first full manuscript draft (Writing – Original Draft) is a separate role from revising it after feedback (Writing – Review & Editing); many students default to listing only one.

    How to Write Your First CRediT Statement

    Use this sequence rather than filling in the statement alone on submission day.

    1. Map your actual tasks to the 14 definitions first. Work from what you did, not from what would look impressive.
    2. Draft a preliminary list with a degree of contribution (lead, equal, or supporting) for each role, following the format used by publishers such as Wiley.
    3. Schedule a dedicated conversation with your supervisor early — ideally when the manuscript is drafted, not at the submission deadline — and explicitly ask whether Supervision should be recorded for them.
    4. Circulate the full statement to every co-author for review and agreement before submission; the submitting author is responsible for confirming everyone has signed off.
    5. Reference the definitions, not memory, if there is disagreement. Point to the specific NISO wording for the contested role.
    6. Escalate unresolved disputes through your institution rather than the journal — publishers typically do not arbitrate authorship or contribution disagreements, a position consistent with COPE’s authorship-dispute guidance.
    7. Paste the final, agreed statement into your target journal’s Author Contributions section in the format that journal requires.

    Common Questions First-Time Authors Ask About CRediT

    What are examples of author contributions?

    Typical examples include a first author credited for Investigation, Formal Analysis, and Writing – Original Draft, and a supervisor credited for Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, and Supervision. A lab technician or collaborator might be credited only for Resources or Validation, reflecting a narrower, well-defined contribution.

    How do you write an author’s contribution statement?

    Map each author’s actual tasks against the 14 CRediT role definitions, note a degree of contribution where the journal allows it, then have every author review and agree the final wording before submission. The statement should describe real work, not seniority or author order.

    Where do author contributions go in a manuscript?

    Most journals place the CRediT statement in a dedicated “Author Contributions” section, usually just before the Acknowledgements or Funding statement and after the main text. Some journals, including several using the Elsevier and Wiley submission systems, capture it as structured metadata at submission rather than free text.

    Does a single-author paper still need a CRediT statement?

    Yes — publisher guidance, including Wiley’s, confirms a sole author should still complete a CRediT statement, though they need only list the roles that genuinely apply, since one person rarely performs all 14.

    As research assessment moves toward finer-grained recognition of individual contribution — visible in ORCID’s role-linking features and in institutional promotion cases that now cite specific CRediT roles rather than author position alone — an accurate first statement matters beyond a single paper. Treat it as the first entry in a contribution record you will build on throughout your career, not a box to tick before submission.

  • Author Credit Taxonomy Support: ScholarOne, Editorial Manager and OJS Compared

    Author credit taxonomy support differs sharply across manuscript submission systems: some platforms capture each contributor’s CRediT role as a structured, exportable data field, while others still reduce it to a single free-text paragraph that cannot be parsed by machines. For institutions, publishers and developers evaluating submission infrastructure, that distinction determines whether contributor-role data can flow into JATS XML, Crossref deposits and ORCID records — or whether it dead-ends as unstructured prose on a PDF.

    The author credit taxonomy in question is CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), a controlled vocabulary of 14 categories used to describe individual contributions to a research output. CASRAI originated CRediT in 2014, following a 2012 workshop convened by Harvard University and the Wellcome Trust with input from the ICMJE and publishers including Cell Press; the taxonomy is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. This article compares how ScholarOne, Editorial Manager, OJS and newer submission platforms implement that taxonomy at the point of manuscript intake.

    What is the CRediT taxonomy, and why does the data model matter?

    CRediT is a 14-role controlled vocabulary for describing the specific contributions each named author made to a scholarly output, rather than relying on author order or vague acknowledgements. It was designed to be machine-readable from the outset: each role is a discrete, defined category that can, in principle, be tagged, exported and queried rather than buried in a sentence.

    That “in principle” is the crux of this article. A system can offer CRediT in name — a page that says “describe contributions using CRediT” — while storing the result as one text block. Or it can capture role selection as structured, per-author data. The two approaches look identical to a human reader and completely different to any system trying to reuse the data.

    Structured fields vs free text: the distinction that matters

    Under a structured implementation, the system presents each of the 14 CRediT roles as a selectable field (typically a checkbox or dropdown per co-author), often with a degree-of-contribution qualifier (“lead”, “equal”, “supporting”). The result is stored as discrete, per-author, per-role records that can be exported programmatically.

    Under a free-text implementation, the system asks the corresponding author to write an “Author Contributions” statement, sometimes with the 14 role names listed as a prompt. The output is prose: it reads correctly on the published page but cannot be parsed reliably without natural-language processing, and cannot be validated against the controlled vocabulary at entry.

    This is the single biggest configuration variable buyers should test for, because the same underlying platform can be deployed either way:

    • A structured field validates role names against the controlled vocabulary and rejects free-form entries.
    • A structured field allows more than one role per author and more than one author per role.
    • A structured field can be exported to XML without re-keying or manual extraction.
    • A free-text field can drift from the taxonomy’s exact role names over time, breaking downstream matching.

    Which manuscript submission systems support CRediT as structured metadata?

    Support for structured CRediT capture is uneven and, for the two dominant commercial systems, largely a function of publisher configuration rather than a fixed platform feature. The table below summarises the current landscape.

    System CRediT capture model Structured export Buyer note
    ScholarOne (Clarivate) Configurable per journal — per-author role checkboxes, or a single free-text contributions field Achievable via JATS mapping when configured as structured fields Ask the editorial office how the instance is configured; the platform supports both models
    Editorial Manager (Aries Systems) Configurable per journal — a dedicated CRediT role-selection step for co-authors, where enabled Achievable via JATS/Crossref mapping once the structured step is switched on Structured capture is not universal across every Editorial Manager journal
    OJS (Public Knowledge Project) Native structured role assignment via the PKP “CRediT Roles” plugin, available from OJS 3.3 onward Role data included in OJS metadata export Open-source and self-hosted; the plugin is purpose-built for CRediT, but must be enabled per journal
    F1000Research and similar open-research platforms CRediT-style author-role fields built into the core submission form Varies by platform; several publish structured contribution statements alongside the article Newer platforms increasingly treat CRediT as a native field rather than a retrofit

    The practical implication: two journals on the same ScholarOne or Editorial Manager instance can have different CRediT data quality, purely because one editorial office enabled structured role capture and the other did not. This is the gap generic “what is CRediT” explainers do not cover — and the one that matters most to institutions harvesting contribution data at scale.

    How structured CRediT data reaches JATS, Crossref and ORCID

    Structured CRediT capture only pays off downstream if the submission system exports it in a format that JATS-compliant production systems and Crossref’s deposit schema can consume. JATS4R (JATS for Reuse) publishes a tagging recommendation for encoding contributor roles inside the JATS XML <role> element, referencing the CRediT vocabulary so that role names are unambiguous across publishers. Crossref’s metadata schema likewise supports contributor role information within deposited XML records, which is how role data becomes queryable through Crossref’s own metadata search rather than existing only inside the published PDF.

    ORCID adds a further layer: authors can have specific roles asserted against their ORCID record, giving a portable, verifiable claim to a specific contribution rather than a generic “authorship” credit. None of this works if the originating manuscript system stored the contribution as free text — there is no reliable path from a paragraph of prose back to a controlled-vocabulary role tag.

    What to check before choosing or configuring a system

    For research offices, publishers and developers evaluating or configuring a submission system, the following checklist separates genuine structured support from a CRediT-branded free-text box:

    1. Does the submission form present the 14 CRediT roles as selectable fields, not a text prompt?
    2. Can more than one role be assigned to a single co-author, and more than one co-author to a single role?
    3. Is a degree-of-contribution qualifier (lead/equal/supporting) captured alongside the role?
    4. Does the system export role data in JATS XML or an equivalent structured format, rather than only rendering it as prose on the typeset article?
    5. Is the exported role data mapped to Crossref’s contributor metadata so it is discoverable outside the publisher’s own site?
    6. Does the workflow validate entries against the current CRediT role list, preventing drift from the controlled vocabulary?

    Any system can fail several of these checks while still advertising “CRediT support” on its marketing page, because CRediT compliance and structured-data compliance are configured separately.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the CRediT taxonomy?

    CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a standardised, 14-role controlled vocabulary used to describe individual author contributions to a research output. It replaces vague authorship statements with discrete, named categories such as Investigation, Methodology and Supervision, submitted alongside the manuscript.

    What are the 14 roles in the CRediT taxonomy?

    The 14 roles are Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, and Writing – review and editing. Each is independently assignable to any number of contributors.

    What does “Investigation” mean in the CRediT taxonomy?

    Investigation covers conducting the research process itself — specifically performing experiments or collecting data and evidence. It is distinct from Methodology (designing the approach) and Formal analysis (applying statistical or computational techniques to the resulting data).

    Implications for institutions and publishers

    Research offices building contribution-tracking dashboards, funders assessing author-level input, and publishers demonstrating transparent attribution all depend on the same upstream condition: structured capture at the point of submission. Retrofitting structured data from published free-text statements is expensive and unreliable at scale.

    The near-term trend favours structure. OJS has built a native CRediT plugin rather than treating role capture as an afterthought, and newer open-research platforms are designing CRediT fields into submission forms from launch. Commercial systems remain configurable rather than structured-by-default, so responsibility currently sits with the editorial office, not the vendor, to switch on genuine structured capture. Institutions evaluating submission infrastructure should treat “structured CRediT export” as a specific, testable procurement requirement — not an assumption that follows from a vendor’s marketing claim of CRediT support.

  • CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy Example: A 5-Author, Multi-Site Study Walkthrough

    A credit contributor roles taxonomy example works best as a full worked matrix: all 14 CRediT roles mapped against every named contributor, so that overlapping statistical, clinical, and writing work on a multi-author study becomes explicit rather than assumed from author order. This article builds that matrix, role by role, for a hypothetical five-author, three-site trial.

    CRediT (the Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a fourteen-role controlled vocabulary for describing the specific type of contribution each named contributor made to a research output, independent of author order or seniority. CASRAI originated CRediT in 2014; the taxonomy is now formally stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, approved in 2022 and licensed CC-BY 4.0 for free reuse by any publisher, funder, or institution.

    What is the CRediT contributor roles taxonomy?

    The CRediT contributor roles taxonomy lists fourteen discrete role types: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, and Writing – review & editing. Any contributor can hold multiple roles, and any role can be shared by multiple contributors.

    Under the NISO standard, each shared role can optionally carry a degree-of-contribution qualifier:

    • Lead — this person did most of the work for that role
    • Equal — contribution was shared roughly evenly with named co-contributors
    • Supporting — a secondary, assisting contribution to that role

    These qualifiers are what make a worked example useful: a bare list of role names tells a reader little, but a role assigned “Lead” versus “Supporting” against a specific name tells them exactly how the work divided.

    The hypothetical study: a five-author, three-site trial

    To make the taxonomy concrete, consider a hypothetical trial: “Effects of a community-based exercise programme on cardiometabolic risk markers,” run across three sites — a lead university, a partner university running local recruitment, and an NHS trust providing the clinical setting. Five people are named as contributors:

    • Dr Amara Osei — Chief Investigator, lead university
    • Dr Rhys Bevan — Co-investigator and site lead, partner university
    • Dr Priya Nair — Biostatistician, lead university
    • Fatima Choudhury — Research nurse and clinical trial coordinator, NHS trust site
    • Dr Tomasz Wolski — Postdoctoral researcher, lead university

    This spread is deliberately realistic: it mirrors the multi-site, mixed-role structure of a typical funded clinical or field trial, where no single person can plausibly claim every contribution, and where author contributions examples published in journals routinely span exactly this kind of team.

    Role-by-role: assigning all 14 CRediT roles

    Working through each role in turn, rather than starting from “who is first author,” keeps the exercise honest. Below is the completed matrix for this hypothetical team.

    CRediT role Osei (CI) Bevan (Co-I) Nair (Statistician) Choudhury (Nurse/Coordinator) Wolski (Postdoc)
    Conceptualization Lead — — — Supporting
    Data curation — — Equal Equal —
    Formal analysis — — Lead — Supporting
    Funding acquisition Lead — — — —
    Investigation — Equal — Lead —
    Methodology Supporting Lead — — —
    Project administration — Lead — Supporting —
    Resources — — — Lead —
    Software — — Lead — —
    Supervision Lead — — — —
    Validation — — Lead — —
    Visualization — — Lead — Supporting
    Writing – original draft — — — — Lead
    Writing – review & editing Equal Equal — — Equal

    Reading the matrix

    Three things stand out that a title-only author list would hide. First, Dr Nair, the biostatistician, holds five roles (Formal analysis, Software, Validation, Visualization, and a shared Data curation) despite not being first or corresponding author. Second, Fatima Choudhury — a research nurse, not a doctoral-level academic — leads Investigation and Resources, reflecting that she ran the clinical site day-to-day. Third, no single person leads more than four roles; the workload is genuinely distributed across the three sites, which is precisely the pattern credit contributor roles taxonomy assignment is designed to surface.

    Writing the published CRediT statement

    Once the matrix is agreed, it converts directly into the “Author Contributions” text that journals such as Elsevier, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis titles require at submission:

    “Amara Osei: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Methodology (supporting), Writing – review & editing (equal). Rhys Bevan: Methodology (lead), Investigation (equal), Project administration (lead), Writing – review & editing (equal). Priya Nair: Formal analysis, Software, Validation, Visualization, Data curation (equal). Fatima Choudhury: Investigation (lead), Resources, Data curation (equal), Project administration (supporting). Tomasz Wolski: Writing – original draft, Conceptualization (supporting), Formal analysis (supporting), Visualization (supporting), Writing – review & editing (equal).”

    This is a genuine statement of contribution example built directly from the matrix above — nothing in it needs to be reverse-engineered from a vague sentence like “all authors contributed equally,” which contributes no verifiable information at all.

    Common questions about CRediT contributor roles

    What is CRediT contributor role taxonomy?

    CRediT is a standardised, fourteen-role vocabulary for describing what each named contributor actually did on a research output, rather than relying on author position alone. It was originated by CASRAI in 2014 and is now formalised as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, used across most major scholarly publishers at submission.

    What are the 14 CRediT contributor roles?

    The fourteen roles are Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, and Writing – review & editing. Multiple contributors can share any single role, each optionally marked lead, equal, or supporting.

    How do you write a contributorship statement?

    List every named contributor, then assign each of the fourteen CRediT roles they actually performed, using degree-of-contribution qualifiers where a role is shared. Agree the matrix among all co-authors before submission — the ICMJE and COPE both flag late, undiscussed contributorship claims as a common source of authorship disputes.

    In what order should authors be listed?

    Author order is a separate decision from CRediT roles and typically reflects relative overall contribution, with the corresponding author (often, but not always, first or last) taking responsibility for the submission. CRediT does not replace author order — it supplements it with role-level transparency that order alone cannot convey.

    Implications for multi-site studies — and what comes next

    Multi-site teams like the hypothetical trial above create a specific governance risk: contributions made at a partner site or NHS trust are structurally easy to under-credit if roles are assigned only by the lead institution after the fact. Building the matrix role-by-role, rather than writing a summary sentence, forces every site’s actual work — clinical coordination, statistical modelling, field recruitment — into the open before submission.

    For research offices and institutional repositories, a completed CRediT matrix is also increasingly machine-readable output metadata: DataCite and CrossRef schemas can carry contributor roles alongside ORCID iDs, feeding directly into research information systems without re-keying. As more funders request contributor-level reporting alongside authorship criteria, teams that build the habit of completing a full role matrix — not just a name list — will find compliance largely already done. Institutions building their own role-assignment workflows can start from the individual role definitions to check edge cases the matrix above does not cover.

  • Author Contribution Statement for Case Reports

    An author contribution statement example for a case report should list only the roles that genuinely apply to one or two authors — typically conceptualisation, investigation, and writing — rather than force-fitting all fourteen CRediT categories built for large research teams. For a sole author, a single sentence confirming full responsibility across the applicable roles satisfies both journal policy and ICMJE authorship criteria.

    An author contribution statement is a short, published declaration — separate from the acknowledgements — that specifies which named author performed which part of the research and writing. Below is a practical, minimal-author template for case reports, built around the taxonomy’s actual scope rather than a mechanical checklist.

    What is an author contribution statement, and why do case reports struggle with it?

    An author contribution statement is a brief, structured account — usually one to three sentences per author — of who conceived, conducted, and wrote a published work. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014, and the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, defining fourteen discrete contributor roles: Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft, and Writing – Review & Editing.

    The taxonomy was designed for multi-author, multi-institution collaborations where credit disputes and hidden labour are real risks. A single-author case report has no such dispute to resolve — one person, by definition, performed every applicable role. Forcing all fourteen categories onto one or two names produces a statement that reads as padding rather than disclosure, which is precisely the awkward fit this template addresses.

    How do you write a single-author case report contribution statement?

    For a sole-author case report, the statement should confirm that the author meets the ICMJE authorship criteria in full, without listing categories that plainly do not apply (Software, Funding Acquisition, and Project Administration are the ones most often irrelevant to a single clinical case). The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors requires that every listed author:

    • Made a substantial contribution to the conception, design, acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the case;
    • Drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content;
    • Approved the final version for publication; and
    • Agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work’s accuracy and integrity.

    A minimal, publication-ready example: “The author conceived the case report, collected and interpreted the clinical data, drafted the manuscript, and approved the final version for submission.” A CRediT-tagged variant works equally well: “Author Name: Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing.” Both versions satisfy journal policy; the second is preferable where the target journal explicitly asks for CRediT-labelled statements rather than free text.

    How do you split CRediT roles between two authors in a case report?

    With two authors — commonly a treating clinician and a co-author handling the literature review or write-up — the statement should separate clinical-care roles from writing roles rather than duplicating the full taxonomy for each name. This keeps the statement honest: a supervising consultant who reviewed but did not draft the manuscript should not appear under Writing – Original Draft.

    CRediT role Typical applicability to a case report Notes
    Conceptualization Applies Identifying the case as reportable
    Investigation Applies Clinical assessment, data gathering
    Writing – Original Draft Applies Usually one named drafting author
    Writing – Review & Editing Applies Supervising or co-author input
    Supervision Rarely applies Only where a senior author directed the case work
    Validation Rarely applies Relevant only if data required independent checking
    Data Curation Rarely applies Usually not distinct from Investigation in a case report
    Software, Funding Acquisition, Project Administration, Resources, Formal Analysis, Visualization, Methodology Usually N/A Omit rather than force-fit for a single case

    Example two-author statement: “Dr A managed the patient, conceived the report, and revised the manuscript critically. Dr B conducted the literature review and drafted the manuscript. Both authors approved the final version and agree to be accountable for its accuracy.” Where a journal mandates CRediT labels specifically, the equivalent tagged form is: “Dr A: Conceptualization, Supervision, Writing – Review & Editing. Dr B: Investigation, Writing – Original Draft.”

    Which journals require this, and in what format?

    Requirements vary by publisher, and case reports are frequently held to the same policy as full research articles even though the taxonomy was not built with them in mind. Elsevier requires a CRediT author statement for all research articles, including case reports, under its published CRediT author statement policy. JMIR treats the Authors’ Contributions section as optional but recommended, per guidance updated by JMIR Publications on 2 February 2026, while Springer/Nature journals commonly request a free-text statement such as “all authors contributed to the study conception and design,” without mandating the full fourteen-role CRediT format.

    Publisher / body Statement required? Format
    Elsevier Mandatory CRediT-tagged roles, degree-of-contribution optional
    Springer / Nature Mandatory (most journals) Free-text narrative statement
    JMIR Optional but recommended Free-text narrative statement
    ICMJE (cross-publisher baseline) Recommended policy, not a form Four-criteria authorship test

    The American Astronomical Society’s journals took the free-text route deliberately: when AASTeX v7.0 introduced Author Contribution sections, the society specified a free-form field “rather than a formulaic set of checkboxes,” precisely because a rigid taxonomy poorly serves papers with unusual author configurations — a principle that extends directly to minimal-author case reports.

    Common questions on author contribution statements

    How to write an author contribution in a case report?

    State each named author’s role using plain, active verbs — conceived, collected, drafted, revised, approved — rather than the full CRediT list. Confirm every author meets all four ICMJE criteria; anyone who does not should move to the acknowledgements instead of the byline.

    How do you write an author’s contribution statement?

    Identify what each author actually did across conception, data work, drafting, and approval, then write one sentence per author naming those tasks. Use either free text or CRediT-tagged roles depending on the target journal’s house style, and have every author confirm the wording before submission.

    What are examples of author contributions?

    Common contribution categories include conceiving the study, acquiring or analysing data, drafting the manuscript, critically revising it, and supervising the work. The CRediT taxonomy formalises fourteen such categories, but a case report typically draws on only three or four of them.

    What is a contribution statement example?

    A minimal example: “The author conceived the case, gathered clinical data, drafted the manuscript, and approved the final version.” This single sentence satisfies ICMJE’s authorship test and works for any single-author case report regardless of specialty.

    What this means for case report authors and editors

    Journals and editorial offices reviewing minimal-author submissions should stop asking authors to populate all fourteen CRediT fields by default. A short, honest, ICMJE-aligned narrative — or a CRediT statement limited to the roles that genuinely applied — better serves both transparency and author time than a taxonomy stretched past its design case. Editors adopting free-text options, as AAS Journals did for astrophysics collaborations of any size, give case report authors a route that neither omits required disclosure nor manufactures roles that were never performed.

    As more publishers formalise contribution statements as a submission requirement rather than an optional courtesy, case report authors gain most by keeping the statement proportional: name every applicable role, omit the rest, and confirm ICMJE accountability explicitly rather than by implication.

  • Author Contribution Statement Examples in Review Articles

    Not all 14 CRediT roles apply to a review article. When a manuscript synthesises existing literature rather than collecting primary data, roles built around experiments, materials and datasets — Investigation, Resources, Data Curation — rarely fit, while Conceptualization, Methodology, Formal Analysis, Visualization and both Writing roles almost always do. An author contribution statement example review article authors can adapt should map contributions to the roles the review actually required, not force every author into a role designed for empirical research.

    The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is a fourteen-role classification system used to describe, in a standardised author contribution statement, exactly what each named author did on a published work. CASRAI originated CRediT in 2014 as a response to opaque, order-of-authorship-only bylines; the taxonomy is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, with the current definitions maintained at credit.niso.org.

    Which CRediT roles actually apply to a review article?

    Seven to nine of the fourteen CRediT roles map cleanly onto review-article work. Conceptualization covers who framed the review question and scope — always relevant, since every review starts from a defined aim. Methodology covers the design of the search strategy, inclusion/exclusion criteria and, for systematic reviews, the registered protocol.

    Formal Analysis applies wherever authors synthesise findings — statistically in a meta-analysis, thematically in a narrative review. Visualization covers PRISMA flow diagrams, forest plots and summary tables, which most reviews include. Writing – Original Draft and Writing – Review & Editing apply to every author who meets ICMJE’s drafting-or-revising criterion. Supervision, Project Administration and Funding Acquisition apply exactly as they would on any funded, multi-author output.

    Which roles rarely apply when there’s no primary data collection?

    Resources and Data Curation were written for empirical studies: provision of reagents, patients, instrumentation, or management of a generated dataset. A review that only reads and synthesises published sources produces no such materials, so these roles should usually be omitted rather than stretched.

    Software only applies if authors built bespoke code — for example a custom R script for a meta-analysis — not for using standard reference-management tools. Validation, defined by NISO as verifying reproducibility of results or experiments, has no primary experiment to verify in most narrative reviews, though it can legitimately apply to a systematic review’s dual-reviewer screening check.

    Investigation is the most commonly misapplied role in review contribution statements. NISO’s definition ties it to “performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection” — some editors accept that a systematic literature search and screening process counts as evidence collection, while others reserve Investigation strictly for primary data gathering. Because guidance is inconsistent across publishers, review teams should state explicitly what “Investigation” covers in their statement rather than assume a shared reading.

    CRediT role Typical fit for a review article Note
    Conceptualization Applies Framing the review question and aims
    Methodology Applies Search strategy, protocol, screening criteria
    Investigation Contested Literature search sometimes counted, sometimes not
    Formal Analysis Applies Statistical or thematic synthesis
    Data Curation Rarely applies No generated dataset in most reviews
    Resources Rarely applies No materials, patients or instrumentation
    Software Rarely applies Only if bespoke analysis code was built
    Validation Rarely applies Occasional fit for dual-reviewer screening checks
    Visualization Applies PRISMA diagrams, forest plots, summary tables
    Writing – Original Draft Applies Always, for drafting authors
    Writing – Review & Editing Applies Always, for revising authors
    Supervision Applies Senior-author oversight
    Project Administration Applies Coordinating multi-reviewer teams
    Funding Acquisition Applies If the review was funded

    Does it differ between narrative and systematic reviews?

    Yes. A systematic review generates far more CRediT-relevant activity than a narrative review because it follows a documented protocol. Formal database searching, dual-reviewer screening, a PRISMA flow diagram and, often, a meta-analysis all create genuine Methodology, Formal Analysis and Visualization contributions.

    A narrative review, by contrast, typically compresses most of the work into Conceptualization and the two Writing roles, since there is no registered protocol or formal extraction process to document separately. Authors of narrative reviews should resist copying a systematic-review template wholesale — an author contribution statement that lists Investigation, Validation and Data Curation for a narrative review with no protocol will look inflated to an editor who knows the difference.

    How do you write the statement itself?

    Springer Nature’s author instructions explicitly accommodate reviews: where “discrete statements are less applicable,” the statement should still identify who had the idea for the article and who performed the literature search, even without a full role-by-role breakdown. JMIR’s author guidance is more direct: “Some roles won’t apply – each research output is different; if specific CRediT roles are not relevant to a particular output, they do not need to be included.”

    A practical three-author example for a systematic review:

    • Conceptualization: A.B. (lead), C.D. (equal)
    • Methodology: A.B., C.D.
    • Formal Analysis: E.F.
    • Visualization: E.F. (lead), A.B. (supporting)
    • Writing – Original Draft: A.B. (lead), C.D. (supporting)
    • Writing – Review & Editing: A.B., C.D., E.F.
    • Supervision: A.B.

    Note what is absent: no Data Curation, Resources, Software or Validation, because none occurred. Under ICMJE’s authorship criteria, every named author must still meet all four conditions — substantial contribution, drafting or revising, final approval, and accountability — regardless of which CRediT roles they are assigned.

    Common questions about author contribution statements

    What is a contribution statement example?

    A contribution statement lists each author’s initials against the specific CRediT roles they performed, such as “A.B.: Conceptualization, Writing – Original Draft; C.D.: Formal Analysis, Writing – Review & Editing.” It replaces vague author-order assumptions with an explicit, auditable record.

    What is the author contribution statement in Springer?

    Springer Nature requires a statement of responsibility in every manuscript, including review-type articles, specifying each author’s contribution. For reviews where a full role-by-role breakdown does not fit, Springer still expects the statement to name who conceived the article and who conducted the literature search.

    How to write an author contribution statement?

    List every author’s initials, then attach the CRediT roles that genuinely apply to their work on that specific manuscript, omitting roles that do not apply rather than padding the list. Corresponding authors are responsible for confirming the statement with every co-author before submission.

    What should substantial contributions include to be credited as an author?

    Per ICMJE, substantial contribution means conception or design, or acquisition/analysis/interpretation of data, combined with drafting or critically revising the work, final approval, and accountability for its accuracy. Meeting only one criterion, such as literature searching alone, does not by itself satisfy authorship requirements.

    What this means for review authors and editors

    Review teams that copy a data-heavy CRediT template wholesale risk two failure modes: omitting genuine synthesis work under vague “Writing” credit, or inflating the statement with roles like Investigation and Data Curation that a careful editor will question. The more defensible approach is to start from the fourteen roles, keep the seven or eight that genuinely occurred, and state plainly — as JMIR’s guidance recommends — that the rest were not applicable to this output.

    As more publishers formalise CRediT for review-type manuscripts under ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, expect journal instructions to increasingly distinguish narrative from systematic reviews in their contribution-statement guidance, closing the ambiguity that currently surrounds roles like Investigation. Until then, the safest practice for review authors is explicit scoping: name what each role means in this specific manuscript, rather than relying on definitions written for laboratory-based research.

  • Author Contribution Statement Frontiers Guide: What Open Peer Review Changes

    An author contribution statement for Frontiers is a mandatory, standardised disclosure — built on the CRediT taxonomy — that names each author’s initials against specific research tasks, placed just before the references. Because Frontiers also operates a collaborative, open peer review model in which reviewer identities are published alongside the article, that statement sits inside a visibly transparent record rather than behind a closed editorial process, raising the stakes for accuracy and completeness compared with journals that keep review closed.

    The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is a structured set of 14 standardised labels — from Conceptualization to Writing – Review & Editing — used to describe what each named author actually did on a manuscript, replacing vague free-text authorship blurbs with a checkable, comparable record.

    What does Frontiers require in an author contribution statement?

    Frontiers’ author guidelines make the Author Contributions Statement mandatory for every submission across its journal portfolio, including titles operated under Frontiers Partnerships. The statement must represent all named authors, briefly describe individual tasks, and identify each person by initials rather than full names — with a middle initial added where two authors share the same first and last initials (for example, REW and RSW).

    Practically, the submitting author enters each co-author’s contributions during the online submission process, and the system compiles them into the final statement, which is placed at the end of the manuscript, immediately before the References section. This mirrors the broader shift documented by publishers such as Elsevier and Wiley toward structured, submission-system-driven contribution capture rather than a free-text paragraph drafted after the fact.

    Frontiers’ authorship threshold is explicitly anchored to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria: substantial contribution to conception or design, data acquisition, analysis or interpretation; drafting or critically revising the work; final approval of the version to be published; and agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work. A CRediT-tagged contribution statement does not replace this authorship test — it documents what qualifying authors did, once they already qualify.

    What is CRediT, and where did it come from?

    CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014, in collaboration with journal publishers and research funders seeking a shared vocabulary for describing authorship work. The standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, which is the current authoritative specification of the 14 roles and their definitions.

    Frontiers announced its adoption of CRediT on 20 July 2023, stating that the system “replaces the conventional free-text authorship descriptions with a standardized and transparent system that ensures consistency and accuracy in recognizing individual contributions.” Frontiers’ chief executive editor, Dr Frederick Fenter, framed the move as part of a wider commitment to openness within scholarly publishing.

    • Conceptualization
    • Data Curation
    • Formal Analysis
    • Funding Acquisition
    • Investigation
    • Methodology
    • Project Administration
    • Resources
    • Software
    • Supervision
    • Validation
    • Visualization
    • Writing – Original Draft
    • Writing – Review & Editing

    Each role can be assigned to more than one author, and a single author can hold multiple roles — the taxonomy is designed to reflect real research teams, where contributions overlap rather than divide neatly by job title.

    How does Frontiers’ open peer review model change the stakes?

    Frontiers runs a collaborative review process in which reviewers interact directly with authors during revision and reviewer names are published on the final article. That design choice matters for contribution statements: in a closed-review journal, an inaccurate or vague CRediT statement is checked, at most, by an anonymous editor and reviewers whose identities never surface. At Frontiers, the same statement sits on a page where the reviewers who scrutinised the work are named too, creating a fuller, mutually visible accountability chain from idea to publication.

    This does not mean reviewers audit CRediT tags line by line — Frontiers’ policy places that responsibility on the corresponding author — but it does mean the entire provenance record (who contributed what, and who reviewed it) is public and durable rather than partially hidden. For research integrity investigations, that visibility is a practical asset: a named reviewer trail alongside a role-based authorship record narrows the anonymity gap that closed models leave open.

    Feature Traditional closed peer review Frontiers’ collaborative open review
    Reviewer identity Anonymous to readers (and often to authors) Published with the article
    Author contribution statement Visible to readers, but reviewed only by an anonymous editor Visible to readers alongside named reviewers who assessed the work
    Post-publication scrutiny Contribution disputes are harder to trace to a specific review stage Named reviewer record supports faster provenance checks
    Incentive for precision Lower — statement rarely cross-checked publicly Higher — statement sits next to a public, named review record

    For research administrators advising on authorship disputes, this distinction is worth flagging explicitly: a Frontiers submission carries more public accountability infrastructure around a contribution statement than an equivalent closed-review journal, even though the CRediT taxonomy itself is identical across both.

    What does a compliant example look like?

    A CRediT-based Frontiers statement is typically compact — a handful of sentences, not a paragraph — and uses initials throughout. A representative, compliant format:

    “AB: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – Original Draft. CD: Investigation, Formal Analysis, Visualization. EF: Data Curation, Software. GH: Supervision, Funding Acquisition. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.”

    Three points distinguish a compliant statement from a weak one:

    • Every named author appears at least once — omitting a listed author from the statement is a common submission-checklist rejection reason.
    • Roles are drawn from the 14 standard CRediT labels, not invented descriptions (“helped with the project” is not a CRediT role).
    • The closing sentence confirming collective approval is retained, satisfying the ICMJE’s fourth authorship criterion on accountability.

    Common questions

    What is a contribution statement example?

    A contribution statement example lists each author’s initials against specific CRediT roles, such as “AB: Conceptualization, Writing – Original Draft.” It is a short, structured disclosure — typically two to five sentences — not a narrative account, and it appears at the end of the manuscript before the references.

    How do I write an author contribution statement?

    Assign each named author one or more of the 14 CRediT roles based on what they actually did, list contributions by initials, and add a closing line confirming all authors approved the submitted version. Frontiers’ online submission system compiles these entries automatically once authors provide them.

    Do you have to pay to publish in Frontiers?

    Yes — Frontiers is a gold open-access publisher and charges an article processing charge (APC) only after acceptance; no fee applies to rejected or withdrawn submissions. This fee transparency sits alongside the same openness principle that drives Frontiers’ published reviewer names and public contribution statements.

    Implications for authors and institutions

    Research offices advising authors on Frontiers submissions should treat the contribution statement as a document with two audiences at once: the editorial system checking ICMJE compliance, and a permanent public record sitting next to named reviewers. According to Frontiers Media’s own reporting on the Norwegian Scientific Index (NSD), 96 of its journals were listed in that register as of 2022 — a scale of output where standardised, auditable contribution data materially reduces the administrative burden of resolving authorship disputes after publication.

    Institutions building CRediT literacy into researcher training should note that the taxonomy’s value compounds under open models: a precise, role-based statement becomes machine-readable metadata that can feed ORCID records, funder reporting, and institutional repositories, not just a line in a PDF.

    Where this is heading

    As more publishers combine structured contributorship data with visible review provenance, the author contribution statement stops being a compliance formality and becomes part of a public integrity record. Frontiers’ pairing of mandatory CRediT statements with named, published reviewers is one live example of that shift — and a template other open-review adopters are likely to follow as funders and institutions push for fuller contributorship transparency.

    For the full 14-role reference and role definitions, see the CRediT taxonomy overview and the individual CRediT role pages. For the underlying authorship criteria that a contribution statement documents, see CASRAI’s authorship guidance.