Virtus Interpress has adopted the CRediT Taxonomy toward the author’s contribution to the work

In order to facilitate the transparency of the authors’ contribution, since June 2019 Virtus Interpress approves a decision about the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT). Doing so, we ask our authors to use this taxonomy when providing an Author Contributions section for research papers. The detailed instruction could be downloaded here.

The structured CRediT taxonomy, introduced in 2014, is now used in over 120 journals and set to grow substantially in the next couple of years. It is in adoption by Cell Press, PLOS, Springer, Wiley, Oxford University Press and many other publishers.

CRediT responds to calls for greater transparency and recognition of author contributions and is increasingly being used to investigate authorship. Whilst initially implemented in the life sciences, identification of contributorship is increasingly being seen as important in all disciplines.

The CRediT is helping the shift from authorship to contributorship. Being able to access and use descriptions of contribution more systematically can bring a range of benefits, including (but not limited to):

  • Providing visibility and recognition for researchers working in large teams whose individual contributions are lost in an expansive author list.
  • Providing visibility for a diverse range of research contributions that are key to research output being published beyond a traditional focus on writing and drafting (e.g. data curation, statistical analysis, etc.).
  • Supporting research institutions and authors to resolve author disputes by providing more transparency around individual author roles and responsibility.
  • Supporting research and researcher evaluation by providing a more holistic and nuanced view of the contributions of researchers to research output.
  • Improving the ability to track the outputs and contributions of individual research specialists and grant recipients.
  • Easy identification of potential collaborators and opportunities for research networking.
  • Supporting identification of potential reviewers, experts, and specialists for a variety of roles across research.

We expect that all authors will take public responsibility for the content of the manuscript submitted to Virtus Interpress. The contributions of all authors should be described. The corresponding author is responsible for providing the contributions of all authors at submission. We expect that all authors will have reviewed, discussed, and agreed to their individual contributions ahead of this time. Contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be mentioned in the Acknowledgments. It is expected that those being acknowledged have given their permission to be named. Contributions will be published with the final article, and they should accurately reflect contributions to the work.