Page 5 - Science

EDITORIAL

Transparent author credit

A uthorship on papers is one of the major curren- sciencemag.org/authors/science-journals-editorial-
policies) with these recommendations, including the
cies of the scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, the
any author must
requirement that
contributions of different authors to a given paper
have
made
a sub-
remained relatively
have
conception
stantial contribution to the
or completion
opaque. Contributions
of the underlying research, approve the final
are generally inferred from the order of authors,
version
and implications of position on the
authorship
sci-
integrity of his or her contributions and for the overall
different investigators and
list vary between
manuscript. The importance of such rules is to provide
entific fields. A year ago, a group of editors and publishers of the manuscript, and agree to be accountable for the Editor-in-Chief,
across a wide range of disciplines met to discuss how to a framework for research teams to establish authorship
Science Journals.
provide a more systemic solution to make author contri- and to avoid the inclusion of inappropriate authors. jberg@aaas.org
butions more transparent. This week, their recommenda- The committee also makes suggestions for the respon-
tions have been released (www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/ sibilities of the corresponding authors of papers. Des-
pnas.1715374115), and I applaud ignation as a corresponding
this effort and urge the wide author generally recognizes
adoption of this system. the individual(s) who played a Downloaded from
More explicit articulation of leading role in the research. As
author contributions can be such, this role comes with con-
tremendously beneficial. Ear- siderable responsibility when
lier in my career, I served on publishing the research, which
numerous academic promo- is articulated in the Science
tion committees and, in a few family’s editorial policies.
cases, faculty members took it The group also recom-
upon themselves to thought- mended the use of standard in- http://science.sciencemag.org/
fully annotate their publication dividual identifiers, especially
lists, clarifying their roles in ORCID identifiers (https://
individual publications. This orcid.org). A unique identifier
allowed the committees to dis- associated with each author
tinguish between those papers will enable linking data from
for which the faculty member different publications, includ-
had made major contributions ing CRediT contributions, in
from those involving a lower “…the new recommendations the future. As someone who has on March 1, 2018
level of effort. Such distinctions spent considerable effort ana-
simply were not apparent from are a welcome major step.” lyzing large data sets related to
the author lists alone. One of the activities of scientists, I can
the core recommendations involves use of the Contribu- testify to the value of unique identifiers—they decrease
tor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) system to categorize the the inefficiency and uncertainty associated with sort-
efforts of different authors to a paper (docs.casrai.org/ ing out ambiguous names. The overhead associated
CRediT). This system has 14 categories, including Con- with collecting such data during the manuscript sub-
ceptualization, Investigation, Writing (original draft), mission and publication processes can pay big divi-
dends, both to
and Supervision. Each author’s efforts can be assigned
the investigators involved and
to the
CREDITS: (INSET) ISTOCK.COM/DANE_MARK; (TOP RIGHT) TERRY CLARK The use of a standardized set of categories can enable the cultures of different institutions adjust to the ap-
scientific community.
to one or more of these categories. Many other divisions
No doubt, a system that promotes authorship trans-
are certainly possible, but these 14 were derived from
parency will need to evolve as practices are refined and
of scientific disciplines.
range
practices
across a wide
human- and machine-readable reporting of these con-
proach. But the new recommendations are a welcome
tributions across journals.
major step. The wide adoption of the suggested system
toward
of dif-
making
the
roles
Note that CRediT categories are intended to describe
should go a
long way
author contributions, not to define
ferent individuals involved with a research paper much
what constitutes
an appropriate contribution to warrant authorship.
clearer, moving beyond the obscure author order code
that dominates so much discussion today.
The group recommended best practices for authorship
rules, and we have aligned our editorial policies (www.
–Jeremy Berg
10.1126/science.aat4136
SCIENCE sciencemag.org 2 MARCH 2018 • VOL 359 ISSUE 6379 961
Published by AAAS
DA_0302Editorial.indd 961 2/28/18 10:54 AM