Author Contributions and CRediT

Dec 2, 2025

Changes ↕

21 Feb 2025: Revised to improve clarity and add examples

Introduction

Articles may include CRediT roles and/or a free text Author Contributions statement to describe the activities of each person who contributed to the article. CRediT roles and Author Contributions statement are optional components that should be tagged if available for an article.

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a high-level taxonomy of 14 roles that can be used to describe the activities of each person in producing a scholarly output. Any individual contributor (an author) may have zero or more CRediT roles assigned. Multiple contributors may share the same CRediT roles, and may optionally indicate degree of contribution. If CRediT information is provided for an article (typically transmitted in article metadata), the CRediT roles for each author should be tagged using the <role> element within <contrib> as part of the article metadata. CRediT roles should be displayed in typeset PDFs as a backmatter section titled “Author Contributions” and formatted according to the Interact template guide; although note that CRediT roles should not be duplicated within the article XML to create this display.
Author Contributions Statement is a section of free text that acknowledges the specific contributions of each person. Because it is free text, an author contributions statement can contain detailed information that is not possible to convey using the CRediT taxonomy, and may contain some CRediT roles or adaptations of CRediT roles. When an author contributions statement is provided it should be placed in the back of an article (within <back>) either as its own section tagged using a <sec> element with attribute @sec-type="author-contributions" or as part of the acknowledgements section using the <ack> element.

Ideally, CRediT information should not be duplicated within an article because any inconsistencies may require input from the authors to resolve.

For articles in production, if authors have provided CRediT roles this information will typically be included in the article metadata transmittal from CATS. The CRediT roles should be tagged using <role> elements within article metadata, and displayed in the PDF using the formatting described in the Interact template guide without duplicating CRediT information between article metadata and backmatter.

If both CRediT roles and a free text Author Contributions statement are present, then the free text author contributions statement should be placed in the Acknowledgements section and an author query should be raised.

Author Contributions Statement

A free text Author Contributions Statement may be included in an article as its own section or as part of the acknowledgements section, and may be placed in the back of an article (within <back>) before the references list.

If an Author Contributions Statement is in the acknowledgements section, it should be tagged within the <ack> element and may be placed in its own paragraph <p> element.

This is an example of an Author Contributions Statement within an acknowledgments section.

<ack>
    <title>Acknowledgments</title>
    <p>All authors contributed to the conception of the work. They also were involved in drafting or revising the article critically for intellectual content. All approved the final version.</p>
</ack>

If an Author Contributions Statement is in its own section, the attribute @sec-type="author-contributions" should be tagged on the <sec> element. An Author Contributions Statement may be present using a variety of different section titles, possibly chosen based on journal style, such as “Author contributions”, “Author’s Contributions”, “Author Contribution Statement”, “Authors’ Declaration of Authorship Contribution”, or other variations. The attribute @sec-type="author-contributions" should be added to any backmatter section that is recognizable as an Author Contributions Statement.

This is an example of an Author Contributions Statement in its own section.

<sec sec-type="author-contributions">
    <title>Author contributions</title>
    <p>All authors contributed to this manuscript, wrote the manuscript and were involved with project concept and submission.</p>
</sec>

Depending on the journal’s policy for authorship, it may not be possible for all contributors to be included in an article’s author list. It is currently not possible for contributors who are not included in the author list to have CRediT roles tagged using <role> elements in article metadata. Instead, the Author Contribution Statement or acknowledgements can describe the individual contributions of each person and may use CRediT roles in these descriptions.

Free text author contributions statements may contain recognizable CRediT roles. In some cases it may be possible to tag CRediT roles in <role> elements by extracting metadata from free text author contributions statements. However, this metadata extraction from text is generally not expected, and instructions will be indicated if this is needed.

CRediT

The <role> element should be used within the <contrib> element to tag the CRediT roles that are assigned to the contributors (authors) on the article. Each <role> element should have the name of the CRediT role tagged as text within the <role> element, and have the attributes @vocab, @vocab-identifier, @vocab-term, and @vocab-term-identifier that correspond to the CRediT role.

CRediT roles

This list shows the <role> element tagging for all 14 CRediT roles.

Conceptualization

Definition: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/conceptualization/"
    vocab-term="Conceptualization"
    >Conceptualization</role>

Data curation

Definition: 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.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/data-curation/"
    vocab-term="Data curation"
    >Data curation</role>

Formal analysis

Definition: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesize study data.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/formal-analysis/"
    vocab-term="Formal analysis"
    >Formal analysis</role>

Funding acquisition

Definition: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/funding-acquisition/"
    vocab-term="Funding acquisition"
    >Funding acquisition</role>

Investigation

Definition: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/investigation/"
    vocab-term="Investigation"
    >Investigation</role>

Methodology

Definition: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/methodology/"
    vocab-term="Methodology"
    >Methodology</role>

Project administration

Definition: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/project-administration/"
    vocab-term="Project administration"
    >Project administration</role>

Resources

Definition: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/resources/"
    vocab-term="Resources"
    >Resources</role>

Software

Definition: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/software/"
    vocab-term="Software"
    >Software</role>

Supervision

Definition: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/supervision/"
    vocab-term="Supervision"
    >Supervision</role>

Validation

Definition: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/validation/"
    vocab-term="Validation"
    >Validation</role>

Visualization

Definition: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/visualization/"
    vocab-term="Visualization"
    >Visualization</role>

Writing – original draft

Definition: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/writing-original-draft/"
    vocab-term="Writing &#x2013; original draft"
    >Writing &#x2013; original draft</role>

Note that the dash character is an en dash (–, –) not a hyphen (-, -).

Writing – review & editing

Definition: 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.

<role vocab="credit" vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/writing-review-editing/"
    vocab-term="Writing &#x2013; review &amp; editing"
    >Writing &#x2013; review &amp; editing</role>

Note that the dash character is an en dash (–, –) not a hyphen (-, -).

Degree of Contribution

It is possible for two or more contributors to have the same CRediT role. When more than one contributor has the same CRediT role, each contributor’s degree of contribution may optionally be specified as “equal”, “lead”, or “supporting”.

If a degree of contribution is provided, the degree of contribution should be displayed in parenthesis after the CRediT role in the text of the <role> element, and the <role> element should have a @degree-contribution attribute which contains a value of “equal”, “lead”, or “supporting.”

degree-contribution="equal"
degree-contribution="lead"
degree-contribution="supporting"

For example, contributors who equally performed the role of “Writing - review & editing” would each have this <role> within their <contrib> elements:

<role vocab="credit" 
    vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/writing-review-editing/"
    vocab-term="Writing &#x2013; review &amp; editing" 
    degree-contribution="equal"
    >Writing &#x2013; review &amp; editing (equal)</role>

If two contributors performed the role of “Writing – original draft” with one person leading or performing more of the work and the other person supporting, the lead person would have this <role>:

<role vocab="credit" 
    vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/writing-original-draft/"
    vocab-term="Writing &#x2013; original draft" 
    degree-contribution="lead"
    >Writing &#x2013; original draft (lead)</role>

and the supporting person would have this <role>:

<role vocab="credit" 
    vocab-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/" 
    vocab-term-identifier="https://credit.niso.org/contributor-roles/writing-original-draft/"
    vocab-term="Writing &#x2013; original draft" 
    degree-contribution="supporting"
    >Writing &#x2013; original draft (supporting)</role>

Other uses of the <role> element

The <role> element can also hold non-CRediT roles for a contributor. Some examples are: <role>Reviewing Editor</role>, <role>PhD Student</role>, <role>(she/her)</role>. If a contributor has more than one role then separate <role> elements should be used within the <contrib> element to hold each of the contributor’s roles individually.

<role> elements that contain CRediT roles can be distinguished from <role> elements that contain other kinds of roles by checking whether “credit.niso.org” is contained within the @vocab-term-identifier or @content-type attributes, or checking whether the @vocab attribute equals “credit”.

Examples

These examples illustrate tagging for a variety of different Author Contributions Statements and CRediT roles.