New Research In
Physical Sciences
Social Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Biological Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
- Agricultural Sciences
- Anthropology
- Applied Biological Sciences
- Biochemistry
- Biophysics and Computational Biology
- Cell Biology
- Developmental Biology
- Ecology
- Environmental Sciences
- Evolution
- Genetics
- Immunology and Inflammation
- Medical Sciences
- Microbiology
- Neuroscience
- Pharmacology
- Physiology
- Plant Biology
- Population Biology
- Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
- Sustainability Science
- Systems Biology
Transparency in authors’ contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication
Edited by Karen S. Cook, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved January 18, 2018 (received for review August 30, 2017)

Abstract
In keeping with the growing movement in scientific publishing toward transparency in data and methods, we propose changes to journal authorship policies and procedures to provide insight into which author is responsible for which contributions, better assurance that the list is complete, and clearly articulated standards to justify earning authorship credit. To accomplish these goals, we recommend that journals adopt common and transparent standards for authorship, outline responsibilities for corresponding authors, adopt the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) (docs.casrai.org/CRediT) methodology for attributing contributions, include this information in article metadata, and require authors to use the ORCID persistent digital identifier (https://orcid.org). Additionally, we recommend that universities and research institutions articulate expectations about author roles and responsibilities to provide a point of common understanding for discussion of authorship across research teams. Furthermore, we propose that funding agencies adopt the ORCID identifier and accept the CRediT taxonomy. We encourage scientific societies to further authorship transparency by signing on to these recommendations and promoting them through their meetings and publications programs.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence should be addressed. Email: NASPresident{at}nas.edu.
↵2Present address: Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD 21218.
Author contributions: M.K.M., M.B., J.M.D., B. Hanson, B. Howard, K.H.J., V.K., E.M., B.K.P., R.S., S.S., P.J.S., and I.M.V. designed research; M.B., J.M.D., B. Hanson, K.H.J., V.K., E.M., B.K.P., S.S., and I.M.V. conducted review and editing; K.H.J. provided funding acquisition, project administration, and resources; and M.K.M. and K.H.J. wrote the paper.
Conflict of interest statement: M. McNutt is president of the National Academy of Sciences, the publisher of PNAS. I.V. was Editor-in-chief of PNAS until January 1, 2018. V.K. serves as Chair of the ORCID Board of Directors in a volunteer capacity. Several authors' employers are ORCID member organizations.
Marcia McNutt, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0117-7716; Monica Bradford, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2440-649X; Jeffrey Drazen, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2715-9890; Brooks Hanson, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6230-7145; Bob Howard, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3774-6896; Kathleen Hall Jamieson, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4167-3688; Véronique Kiermer, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8771-7239; Emilie Marcus, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4806-6503; Barbara Kline Pope, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0575-3605; Randy Schekman, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8615-6409; Sowmya Swaminathan, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0285-4910; Peter Stang, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2307-0576; Inder Verma https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4059-075X
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
- Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.
This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY).
Citation Manager Formats
Sign up for Article Alerts
Article Classifications
- Social Sciences
- Social Sciences