Beginning this September, Dryad adopted a subset of CRediT to better define author contributions to the datasets we publish. 

The full Contributor Role Taxonomy, more commonly known as CRediT, establishes 14 author roles spanning the research process from ‘conceptualization’ to ‘writing – review, and editing’ of journal articles. It’s designed to give full and fair credit to everyone involved in a research investigation regardless of seniority, and at the same time limit honorary or gift authorship.

Dryad now supports a subset of 9 author roles which most directly apply to the creation, curation, and publication of datasets, in keeping with recommendations by the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative for generalist repositories.

There are many benefits associated with data sharing. We often point to increased attention, improved research integrity and accelerated progress. Among the less-frequently-discussed rewards are scholarly credit, and its corollary, accountability. Publishing data enables critical examination, replication, and validation, increasing trust in research. It also opens opportunities for early career researchers, coders, technicians and others to earn authorship credit for their vital, often unseen or underappreciated, contributions to research. CRediT both supports accountability and trust, and amplifies recognition through specific, itemized contribution information.

How it works

Assigning CRediT roles to authors is now an optional, but highly recommended, step in the submission workflow for all new datasets; If a role for any author is selected, each author must have at least one role. Upon publication, CRediT roles appear just under author affiliations on published datasets. 

Q: So, does using CRediT on a dataset mean checking the ‘Data curation’ taxon option for every author?

A: No, not at all. While author lists on datasets and published articles aren’t always identical, there are many ways to contribute to a dataset beyond data curation — among them conceptualization, methodology, and project administration.

Once datasets are published, the metadata, including role taxonomy, are ingested by DataCite. They are also picked up by search engines, harvesters, catalogs, and others according to their individual parameters. 

While an optional step for new datasets only, authors of previously published datasets may add CRediT roles if they wish using Dryad’s dataset revision workflow. Revising author affiliations or CRediT roles does not create a new dataset version; it simply updates the relevant metadata.

Dryad is known for the exceptional thoroughness and quality of our metadata, which makes our publications easier to find, interpret, and reuse, leading in turn to increased attention and heightened impact. Incorporating CRediT further strengthens that already-robust metadata suite, adding more interconnected datapoints, more gateways to discover datasets, and deeper insight.