CRediT taxonomy examples look very different depending on where they are published: a life-sciences paper in MDPI or PLOS typically lists all 14 roles with named contributors, while a humanities article often still carries a single sentence such as “the author confirms sole responsibility for this work.” The gap is not accidental. It traces directly to publisher policy — mandatory in most STEM journals, opt-in or absent across much of the humanities — and it creates a real coordination problem for cross-disciplinary teams trying to standardise credit.
CRediT (the Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a 14-role system for describing the specific contributions each author made to a research output, originated by CASRAI in 2014 and now formalised as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, stewarded by NISO. This article examines why uptake diverges so sharply by field, with real examples from both ends of the spectrum, and what that divergence means for teams working across disciplinary lines.
- What is the CRediT taxonomy?
- Why does CRediT adoption vary so much by field?
- What do CRediT taxonomy examples look like across disciplines?
- How do publisher policies drive the STEM–humanities divide?
- What does this mean for cross-disciplinary collaboration?
- Common questions about CRediT taxonomy examples
What is the CRediT taxonomy?
The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) is a standardised set of 14 roles — Conceptualization, Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project Administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – Original Draft, and Writing – Review & Editing — used to describe what each named author actually did on a research output.
CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014, building on earlier contributorship work from a 2012 workshop convened by Nature, Harvard University, and the Wellcome Trust. The standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, published under a CC-BY 4.0 licence. Authors select only the roles relevant to their own contribution — a single author does not need to fulfil all 14.
Why does CRediT adoption vary so much by field?
CRediT adoption tracks publisher policy far more closely than it tracks research quality or complexity. In fields where publishers made CRediT statements mandatory at submission — largely biomedical, life-science, and multidisciplinary mega-journals — contribution statements are now routine. In fields where publishers left CRediT as an optional field or omitted it entirely — much of the humanities and parts of the social sciences — author contribution statements remain rare or absent.
Three structural factors reinforce this split:
- Authorship norms differ. Life-science papers routinely carry five, ten, or dozens of co-authors performing distinct technical roles, which is exactly what CRediT was built to disaggregate. Humanities scholarship is disproportionately single-authored, where a 14-role statement adds little practical value.
- Submission-system defaults matter. Where a manuscript system makes the CRediT field required before submission, compliance is near-universal by construction. Where it is optional or absent from the template, uptake depends on individual editors and authors.
- Funder and integrity pressure is uneven. Biomedical funders and journals face more frequent authorship disputes and integrity investigations, which has pushed publishers such as Elsevier and PLOS toward mandatory disclosure. That pressure is far lighter in most humanities publishing.
What do CRediT taxonomy examples look like across disciplines?
The clearest way to see the divide is to compare a typical statement from a mandating STEM publisher with a typical humanities author note.
A life-sciences example, in the multi-role format required by publishers such as MDPI and PLOS:
- Author 1: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing – original draft.
- Author 2: Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization.
- Author 3: Investigation, Resources.
- Author 4: Supervision, Funding acquisition, Writing – review & editing.
A journal using the “degree of contribution” variant (as documented in Wiley’s author guidance) adds weighting:
- 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).
By contrast, a typical humanities article — for example in a history, literature, or philosophy journal that has not adopted CRediT — carries no role breakdown at all, often just: “The author declares sole responsibility for the research and writing of this article,” or, for co-authored humanities work, “Both authors contributed equally to the conception and writing of this paper.” Neither statement maps to any of the 14 CRediT roles.
The table below sets out where major publishers currently sit on the mandate spectrum.
| Publisher / journal group | Primary discipline mix | CRediT policy |
|---|---|---|
| PLOS | Life and biomedical sciences | Mandatory; among the earliest adopters, integrated into submission in 2016 |
| MDPI | Multidisciplinary, life-science-heavy | Mandatory across its journal portfolio; structured CRediT statement required at submission |
| Elsevier | Multidisciplinary | CRediT author statement published with the article across participating journals |
| Springer Nature (Nature-branded titles) | Life and physical sciences | Author contributions statement required; CRediT roles encouraged |
| Wiley | Multidisciplinary | Journal-by-journal mandate; degree-of-contribution format offered |
| Taylor & Francis | Multidisciplinary, incl. humanities and social sciences | Rolling adoption; not required across all journals |
| Sage | Social sciences and humanities-heavy | Per-journal; Sage’s own author guidance states “not all of Sage’s journals have adopted CRediT” |
How do publisher policies drive the STEM–humanities divide?
Publisher policy, not discipline itself, is the direct lever. Elsevier and PLOS built CRediT into the submission workflow as a required field, so authors cannot submit without completing it. MDPI applies the same mandatory approach across its entire portfolio regardless of subject area, which is why even MDPI’s humanities and social-science titles show comparatively higher CRediT completion than peer humanities journals at other presses.
Sage and Taylor & Francis, whose portfolios include large humanities segments, have taken the opposite approach: CRediT is available but adopted journal-by-journal, and Sage explicitly tells authors to check whether their journal has adopted it before submitting. The resulting patchwork correlates with discipline mainly because humanities-heavy publishers were slower to flip the mandate switch — not because CRediT is technically unsuited to humanities scholarship.
What does this mean for cross-disciplinary collaboration?
The uneven mandate creates a practical problem for teams that span disciplines — digital humanities, science communication, bibliometrics, area studies with quantitative components, or any project combining a life-science co-investigator with a humanities co-investigator. One team member’s home journal may require a full CRediT breakdown; the other’s may have no contributorship field at all.
For research administrators and institutional leaders coordinating such teams, three practical steps reduce friction:
- Agree contributor roles internally using the CRediT taxonomy at project outset, so the record exists even if the target journal does not require it.
- Where the venue omits a CRediT field, add a voluntary CRediT-mapped acknowledgement in the author note or supplementary material.
- Reference the ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 definitions directly, rather than a publisher’s paraphrase, so contributions remain comparable across journals with different house styles.
As more funders and institutions use contributorship data for research assessment and expert discovery, the absence of a CRediT statement in humanities-authored work increasingly reads as a data gap rather than a disciplinary choice — one that cross-disciplinary teams have a direct incentive to close voluntarily, even where their venue does not require it.
Common questions about CRediT taxonomy examples
What is the CRediT taxonomy?
CRediT is a standardised, 14-role taxonomy for describing individual author contributions to a research output, covering everything from Conceptualization and Methodology to Writing – Review & Editing. It replaces vague author-order conventions with an explicit, comparable role list.
What are the 14 roles of 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 & Editing. Authors select only the roles that genuinely apply to their contribution.
What does “Investigation” mean in the CRediT taxonomy?
Under CRediT, Investigation covers conducting the research process itself — specifically performing experiments or carrying out data and evidence collection. It is distinct from Methodology (designing the approach) and Formal Analysis (analysing the resulting data).
How do authors give CRediT to a co-author in a contribution statement?
Authors list each co-author by name followed by their applicable CRediT roles, optionally with a degree of contribution such as “lead,” “equal,” or “supporting.” For example: “Author A: Conceptualization (lead), Writing – original draft (lead).”
The disciplinary gap in CRediT adoption is a policy artefact, not a verdict on whether contributorship matters outside the life sciences. As cross-disciplinary funding calls, digital-humanities partnerships, and research-assessment exercises increasingly draw on contributorship data, journals that have left CRediT optional will face growing pressure — from funders, from co-authors in mandating fields, and from researchers building a verifiable contribution record — to close the gap rather than leave it to the discipline they happen to publish in.