CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy)
is a system that defines 14 roles to describe the specific contributions made by individuals to academic research. These roles range from Conceptualization to Writing – Review & Editing, and contributors can be assigned more than one role if they performed multiple functions. Some roles—such as Conceptualization, Writing – Original Draft, and Writing – Review & Editing—are mandatory. The same role can be assigned to more than one contributor, while other roles may not apply to certain works, depending on the nature of the research.
For consistency, CRediT should also be applied to single-author papers, identifying which roles the author performed. This helps readers understand the author’s expertise and can clarify authorship if questions arise after publication. Importantly, single authors do not need to fulfill all 14 roles, only those relevant to their work. CRediT is flexible, allowing for differences between research outputs while ensuring transparency in how contributions are recognized.
CRediT Roles
Conceptualization
Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims
Methodology
Development or design of methodology; creation of models
Software
Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components
Validation
Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs
Formal analysis
Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data
Investigation
Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection
Resources
Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools
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 reuse
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 postpublication stages
Visualization
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation
Supervision
Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team
Project administration
Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution
Funding acquisition
Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication
