CRediT (“Contributor Roles Taxonomy”) is a taxonomy used to attribute authorship in scientific research. The taxonomy consists of 14 specific roles to represent the variety of contributions that may apply within a research and writing process. In practice, CRediT is a controlled vocabulary for specific author contributions. When CRediT is applied to a work, the work will have an authorship list based upon these contributor roles. This lesson introduces the roles and engages participants in activities that foster familiarity with the roles as well as critical thinking about their use.
Content Contributors: Hannah Chapman Tripp, David B. Lowe, Natalia Kapacinskas, Shelley Barba, Santi Thompson
Lesson Maintainers: Hannah Chapman Tripp, David B. Lowe
Lesson status: Active
- Recognize complexities involved in attribution of scholarly authorship
- Understand what CRediT is and how it seeks to address problems in attribution
- Apply CRediT in theoretical and practical scenarios
- Identify limitations of CRediT
- What is CRediT?
- Why use CRediT Taxonomy?
- Applying the CRediT Taxonomy
- Limitations of the CRedit Taxonomy
Author Carpentry's teaching is hands-on, so participants are encouraged to use their own computers to insure the proper setup of tools for an efficient workflow. These lessons assume no prior knowledge of the skills or tools, but working through this lesson requires working copies of the software described below. To most effectively use these materials, please make sure to install everything before working through this lesson.
Allen, L., O’Connell, A., & Kiermer, V. (2019). How can we ensure visibility and diversity in research contributions? How the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) is helping the shift from authorship to contributorship. Learned Publishing, 32(1), 71–74. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1210
Allen, L., Scott, J., Brand, A., Hlava, M., & Altman, M. (2014). Publishing: Credit where credit is due. Nature, 508 (7496), 312–313. https://doi.org/10.1038/508312a
FORCE11. (2021, December 18). Deep Dive: Ethics of Contributor Roles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKnnB-jaTYk
Gadd, E. (2020). CRediT check-should we welcome tools to differentiate the contributions made to academic papers?. Impact of Social Sciences Blog. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/103722/1/impactofsocialsciences_2020_01_20_credit_check_should_we_welcome.pdf
Herbert, B. E., & Kaspar, W. A. (2019). Authorship and the Consideration of Alternatives. College & Research Libraries, 80(1), 2. https://crl.acrl.org/index.php/crl/article/viewFile/17542/19371
Holcombe, A. O. (2019). Contributorship, Not Authorship: Use CRediT to Indicate Who Did What. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/dt6e8
Koller, J. (2018, May). Using CRediT to Capture Author Contributions in Editorial Manager. https://wkauthorservices.editage.com/resources/author-resource-review/2018/may-2018.html
NISO (2022). Contributor Roles Taxonomy https://credit.niso.org/
NISO CRediT Working Group. (2022). ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, CRediT, Contributor Roles Taxonomy. NISO. https://doi.org/10.3789/ansi.niso.z39.104-2022
Riot Science Club. (2020). Dr Liz Allen | Beyond authorship: Introducing the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT). Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7UYT-L2nsM