A high-level classification of the diverse roles performed in the work leading to a published research output in the sciences. Its purpose to provide transparency in contributions to scholarly published work, to enable improved systems of attribution, credit, and accountability.
contributor role
Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
conceptualization role
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 re-use.
data curation role
Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesize study data.
formal analysis role
Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.
funding acquisition role
Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
investigation role
Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
methodology role
Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
project administration role
Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
resources role
Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
software role
Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
supervision role
Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
validation role
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.
visualization role
Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
writing original draft role
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 post-publication stages.
writing review and editing role