CRediT

CRediT is a 14 role taxonomy that can be used to describe the key types of contributions typically made to the production and publication of research output. IOP Publishing offers authors the chance to declare what specific contribution they have made on their article, based on the CRediT taxonomy. If accepted for publication, these roles will be displayed in the published article.

More information about CRediT

What are the 14 contributor roles?

• Conceptualization – Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
• Data curation – Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use.
• Formal analysis – Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
• Funding acquisition – Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
• Investigation – Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
• Methodology – Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
• Project administration – Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
• Resources – Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
• Software – Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
• Supervision – Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
• Validation – Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
• Visualization – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
• Writing – original draft – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
• Writing – review & editing – Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages

Who qualifies for authorship?

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
• Drafting the work or reviewing it critically for important intellectual content; AND
• Final approval of the version to be published; AND
• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Not all CRediT contributions mean someone qualifies for authorship. IOP Publishing follows the ICMJE guidelines, which says “Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support; and writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading.” If a contributor does not qualify for authorship, they should be listed in the acknowledgements rather than in the author list.

All co-authors will be able to see the CRediT roles they have been assigned throughout the peer review process. If an author disagrees with the CRediT role(s) that have been assigned, this should be brought to the attention of the journal and the submission will be sent back to the authors for agreement, correction and resubmission by the authors. This will halt the peer review process and will not resume until the corrected manuscript is resubmitted. The journal will not arbitrate in matters of disputed contributions, as per the COPE guidelines. If the authors cannot come to an agreement, IOP Publishing will escalate the dispute to the institution(s) concerned for a decision.

The ICMJE guidelines also state “It is the collective responsibility of the authors, not the journal to which the work is submitted, to determine that all people named as authors meet all four criteria; it is not the role of journal editors to determine who qualifies or does not qualify for authorship or to arbitrate authorship conflicts.” Therefore, in the event of a dispute between authors about contributions, the journal will not arbitrate. Instead IOP Publishing will escalate the dispute to the institution(s) concerned for a decision.

How to assign CRediT roles to authors

When you are getting ready to submit an article, make sure that you have discussed and agreed with your co-authors and contributors the roles that individuals have played.

It is the submitting author’s responsibility to assign CRediT roles across the author list.

Add the author and click on ‘Provide CRediT Contribution’.

Tick the relevant roles in the list and define what level of contribution was made – lead, equal or supporting.

Click “save changes” at the bottom of the page.

The roles will then be visible on the manuscript information page.

Points to note

• CRediT roles are optional – We do not mandate any or all authors having CRediT roles, however it is strongly encouraged;
• Individuals can have several roles – it is common that researchers will have made several contributions to a research output (e.g. article) and can therefore be assigned to more than one CRediT role;
• The same role can be assigned to multiple individuals – a specific CRediT role can also be assigned to multiple individuals;
• 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;
• Some contributors may not qualify for authorship –if a contributor does not qualify for authorship (link to our policy), they should not be added to the author list, instead they can be listed in the acknowledgements;
• Degree of contribution is optional – where multiple individuals serve in the same role, the degree of contribution can optionally be specified as ‘lead’, ‘equal’, or ‘supporting’.