The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has announced its publication of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) as an ANSI/NISO standard, Z39.104-2022. The taxonomy, which was originally developed in 2014, describes 14 roles that represent the typical range of contributors to scientific scholarly outputs, and that can be used to enable recognition and facilitate transparency to the myriad contributions to research in our increasingly networked scholarly ecosystem. CRediT is already in use by more than 50 organizations, a majority of which are scholarly publishers, collectively representing thousands of journals.
The process of formal standardization with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) included the convening of a NISO Working Group for CRediT that ensured clarity in the existing taxonomy language and the implementation instructions for academics and publishers. The updated taxonomy was approved by NISO Voting Members in 2021, and ANSI has now approved it for publication as a standard. Simultaneous with the standardization process, the CRediT website at https://credit.niso.org was launched, to provide a stable home for the identifiers and a central resource for interested parties.
NISO now plans to establish a Standing Committee to support CRediT. This Committee will continue current education and outreach efforts and work with the community to determine how to keep the taxonomy up-to-date and relevant; for example, ensuring continued roll out and adoption among publishers, and exploring how to expand its value to all research disciplinary areas. A Community of Interest Group will also be established, to enable participation of a broad and diverse range of community perspectives and interests, and to inform any future developments of the taxonomy.
The Contributor Roles Taxonomy is freely available at: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/credit
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