Yogesh Singh
Two questions cause a lot of confusion in academic publishing.
First: who counts as an author?
Second: how do we fairly credit everyone who worked on a paper?
ICMJE answers the first question. CRediT answers the second. People often mix them up, so let us keep them clear.
What ICMJE Decides
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) sets the most widely used rule for who can be called an author. It started in medicine, but many fields follow it now.
To be listed as an author, a person must meet all four of these conditions:
– A substantial contribution to the idea, design, or to the data (collecting, analysing, or interpreting it).
– Drafting the paper or revising it for important content.
– Approving the final version before publication.
– Agreeing to be accountable for the work.
All four must be met. Meeting just one or two is not enough.
Anyone who helped but does not meet all four should be thanked in the acknowledgements, not listed as an author.
The Problem ICMJE Does Not Solve
ICMJE tells you who is an author. It does not tell you what each author actually did.
Here is a simple example.
One senior researcher reads the final draft once and approves it. A PhD scholar collects all the data, runs the analysis, and writes the first three drafts.
Both can meet all four ICMJE criteria. But the byline shows them as equal.
A reader cannot tell who really did the work. This is the gap CRediT was built to fix.
Where CRediT Actually Came From
Many people think ICMJE created CRediT. That is not correct.
CRediT came out of a 2012 workshop hosted by the Wellcome Trust and Harvard University. After the workshop, a pilot project built the taxonomy, with help from biomedical journal editors and ICMJE members.
So ICMJE helped shape and test it. But ICMJE did not start it or own it.
The first version came out in 2014. Journals started using it in 2015. In 2022 it became an official ANSI/NISO standard.
The 14 CRediT Roles
CRediT is a standard list of 14 roles that describe how each person contributed:
– Conceptualization
– Data curation
– Formal analysis
– Funding acquisition
– Investigation
– Methodology
– Project administration
– Resources
– Software
– Supervision
– Validation
– Visualization
– Writing – original draft
– Writing – review and editing
One person can have several roles. One role can be shared by many people. This matches how real research teams work.
Why CRediT Matters
– It credits everyone fairly, not just the first and last author.
– It reduces fights over authorship.
– It shows clearly who did what.
– It is free and open to use under a CC-BY licence.
Which Journals Can Use CRediT
Another myth is that CRediT is only for medical journals. It is not.
Any journal, in any field, can use it. Science, engineering, medical, life sciences, social sciences, and humanities journals all use it today.
More than 30 publishers offer CRediT, including Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, PLOS, BMJ, and SAGE.
The roles were designed mainly for the sciences, so humanities journals may map a few contributions loosely. But they are free to adopt it.
The Bottom Line
ICMJE and CRediT are not rivals. They work together.
Use ICMJE to decide who is an author. Use CRediT to record what each author did. Together they make authorship fair and clear.
Need Help Setting Up CRediT in Your Journal?
At DigitalBisht, we help journals and publishers set up clear authorship and CRediT statements inside their submission and peer review systems.
If you run or manage a journal and want help getting this right, reach out to us at digitalbisht.com.
