Transparent Attribution of Contributions to Research: Aligning Guidelines to Real-Life Practices

Valerie Matarese and Karen Shashok
Additional contact information
Valerie Matarese: Authors’ editor and Editorial consultant, Via Roma 10, 31020 Vidor (TV), Italy
Karen Shashok: Translator and Editorial consultant, C./Compositor Ruiz Aznar 12 2-A, 18008 Granada, Spain

Publications, 2019, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-13

Abstract: Research studies, especially in the sciences, may benefit from substantial non-author support without which they could not be completed or published. The term “contributorship” was coined in 1997 to recognize all contributions to a research study, but its implementation (mostly in biomedical reports) has been limited to the inclusion of an “Author Contributions” statement that omits other contributions. To standardize the reporting of contributions across disciplines, irrespective of whether a given contribution merits authorship or acknowledgment, the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) was launched in 2014. Our assessment, however, shows that in practice, CRediT is a detailed authorship classification that risks denying appropriate credit for persons who contribute as non-authors. To illustrate the shortcomings in CRediT and suggest improvements, in this article we review key concepts of authorship and contributorship and examine the range of non-author contributions that may (or may not) be acknowledged. We then briefly describe different types of editorial support provided by (non-author) translators, authors’ editors and writers, and explain why it is not always acknowledged. Finally, we propose two new CRediT taxa and revisions to three existing taxa regarding both technical and editorial support, as a small but important step to make credit attribution more transparent, accurate and open.

Keywords: accountability; acknowledgment; author; authors’ editor; contributor; CRediT; editing; ethics; translation; writing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A2 D83 L82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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