CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: credit taxonomy form

  • 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 Taxonomy Form: From Submission Checkbox to Crossref Metadata

    The credit taxonomy form is the checkbox interface built into manuscript submission systems — such as Editorial Manager and ScholarOne — that lets a corresponding author assign one or more of the 14 CRediT contributor roles to each author. That selection is not just cosmetic: it is designed to travel, unchanged, from the submission form into the article’s JATS XML and, increasingly, into the DOI metadata that Crossref exposes to the wider scholarly record.

    CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a standardised, machine-readable vocabulary of 14 contribution types — such as Conceptualization, Data curation or Writing – original draft — used to describe what each author or contributor actually did, distinct from the separate question of who qualifies for authorship. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014. The standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, with descriptors available in multiple languages.

    This article is written for developers, editorial-systems teams and publishing operations staff who need to understand the full pipeline — not just what CRediT means, but how a checkbox selection becomes a permanent, queryable metadata field.

    What is the CRediT taxonomy form?

    The CRediT taxonomy form is the structured data-entry step, embedded in a journal’s manuscript submission system, where the corresponding author declares each contributor’s role from a fixed list of 14 options. It is a controlled-vocabulary form, not free text — every selection maps to one of the standard CRediT terms, each with its own stable identifier at credit.niso.org.

    The 14 roles captured by the form are:

    • Conceptualization
    • Data curation
    • Formal analysis
    • Funding acquisition
    • Investigation
    • Methodology
    • Project administration
    • Resources
    • Software
    • Supervision
    • Validation
    • Visualization
    • Writing – original draft
    • Writing – review & editing

    A contributor can hold more than one role, and a single role can be assigned to more than one contributor. Some submission systems also let authors record a degree of contribution — lead, equal or supporting — but this qualifier is optional and is not currently part of the CRediT standard itself; individual publishers decide whether to collect it.

    How manuscript systems capture the form at submission

    CRediT capture happens earliest in the pipeline, at manuscript submission, before peer review begins. Aries Systems’ Editorial Manager has supported CRediT since 2016 and Clarivate’s ScholarOne Manuscripts since 2018 — the two dominant commercial manuscript submission systems (MSSs) used across most major publishers. Open Journal Systems (OJS), the leading open-source platform, offers CRediT as a plugin.

    Manuscript system Vendor CRediT support since Integration type
    Editorial Manager Aries Systems 2016 Native checkbox form
    ScholarOne Manuscripts Clarivate 2018 Native checkbox form
    Open Journal Systems (OJS) Public Knowledge Project Community plugin Open-source plugin

    During submission, the corresponding author works through the contributor list and ticks the applicable CRediT roles for each name. The system typically requires this step to be completed, or at least reviewed, before the manuscript can proceed to the editor. Best practice — reflected in NISO’s implementation guidance — is for all named authors to review and confirm the roles assigned to them before the form is finalised, reducing later disputes over credit.

    How CRediT roles are encoded in JATS XML

    Once accepted, the article moves into production, where the checkbox selections are converted into JATS XML (Journal Article Tag Suite) — the NISO standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.96) used to structure scholarly article content and metadata for archiving, indexing and reuse. This is the step that turns a form selection into genuinely machine-readable data rather than just display text on the published page.

    The JATS4R (JATS for Reuse) working group, in a recommendation published 13 September 2021 and current at version 1.2, specifies exactly how CRediT terms must be tagged inside the <role> element within <contrib-group>/<contrib>. Under JATS 1.2 and above, each role carries four attributes:

    • @vocab — must always carry the value “credit”
    • @vocab-identifier — must point to https://credit.niso.org/
    • @vocab-term — must identify the specific CRediT term (e.g. “Conceptualization”)
    • @vocab-term-identifier — must point to the URL of that specific term (e.g. https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/conceptualization/)

    Each CRediT term requires its own <role> element — where a contributor holds multiple roles, the element is repeated rather than combined. JATS4R also provides a validator tool that flags mismatches, such as a role term with no corresponding @vocab="credit" attribute. Publishers still using the older JATS 1.1 DTD can tag CRediT terms using the @content-type attribute instead, though JATS4R recommends migrating to 1.2 for more robust support.

    How CRediT metadata reaches Crossref and the DOI record

    The final leg of the pipeline is deposit with Crossref, the DOI registration agency that most scholarly publishers use to register article identifiers and metadata. Per Crossref’s published strategy roadmap, Crossref is working on metadata ingest schema v.5.5 to add native support for the CRediT taxonomy of contributor roles — meaning the same structured role data captured in JATS XML can be deposited directly against the article’s DOI record.

    Once that ingest path is live, CRediT information becomes queryable through Crossref’s public APIs rather than sitting only inside a publisher’s own XML or HTML. That has knock-on value for research information systems, ORCID contribution records and institutional CRIS platforms, all of which can pull structured contribution data by DOI instead of scraping an “Author Contributions” paragraph from the rendered article page.

    Note that CRediT is explicitly not designed to determine authorship. ICMJE’s authorship criteria and COPE’s guidance on authorship disputes remain the governing frameworks for who qualifies as an author; CRediT — and the form that captures it — only describes what each named contributor did.

    Frequently asked questions

    What is the CRediT taxonomy?

    CRediT is a standardised system of 14 roles for describing individual contributions to a research output. When an author submits to a publisher using CRediT, the submission form asks them to select the applicable roles for each contributor, rather than relying on free-text acknowledgements.

    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 — each with a stable identifier at credit.niso.org.

    How do I CRediT someone in a research paper?

    Agree contributor roles with co-authors before submission, then use the journal’s CRediT taxonomy form to assign one or more of the 14 roles to each name. Where a journal has no integrated form, contributions can be listed manually in an author contribution statement or acknowledgement section.

    Implications for publishers and developers

    For manuscript-system developers, the practical requirement is straightforward but easy to get wrong: the checkbox output must map one-to-one onto the JATS4R attribute set, not a locally invented tag scheme, or the resulting XML will fail JATS4R validation and lose machine-readability further down the chain. For publishing operations teams, the Crossref v.5.5 schema update is the point at which CRediT stops being a publisher-side display feature and becomes part of the permanent scholarly record attached to the DOI itself.

    Institutions and funders tracking research contribution data — for hiring, promotion or grant-reporting purposes — should treat Crossref-deposited CRediT metadata, once available, as a more reliable source than scraping “Author Contributions” text from HTML pages, since the underlying <role> tagging is what the form was designed to produce in the first place.

    What happens next

    As Crossref’s schema v.5.5 rolls out, expect wider adoption of CRediT deposit among publishers that have not yet enabled it, and closer scrutiny from JATS4R’s validator tooling as more XML pipelines attempt to encode CRediT roles at scale. The direction of travel is consistent: from a checkbox on a submission form, through a standard XML attribute set, to a queryable field on a permanent DOI record. Developers building or auditing manuscript-system integrations should treat the CRediT taxonomy and its individual contributor roles as the canonical reference points, alongside the broader question of how contribution data relates to authorship criteria.