Modeling Transparency in Roles: Moving from Authorship to Contributorship

Abstract

describes several principles for appropriate use of information, including "Information has value." "Information has value" in operation means giving credit to the original ideas of authors and recognizing "the skills, time, and effort needed to produce knowledge." College & Research Libraries wants to align itself with this principle by creating transparency around which authors contribute what valuable roles to its publications. Given the increasing number of coauthored articles in scholarly publishing, teasing apart who is responsible for what is a growing task in the evaluation of scholarly work. The journal, its editors, and the editorial board are making a concerted effort to model these values, while still maintaining high standards and impartiality. We are also seeking to evolve the journal and be responsive to the climate around ethics, bias, and openness-and the editorial board members have been heavily engaged in this effort. Hand in hand with this priority to bring transparency to the reviewer process and decision making, there has also been discussion about how to advocate for more transparency in author roles and assigning credit. From my perspective as editor, more clarity and openness around the contributors to paper submissions may provide a better understanding of the project described, but also a more accurate picture of how individuals contributed. Having a model that is more inclusive about contributor roles and the expectations of authorship would also minimize the questions or issues that periodically arise with submissions. I have discussed some of these issues and the potential solutions in previous editorials. 1 Adoption of author role guidelines can only encourage more thoughtful discussion with authors that will reduce the possibility of confusion or conflict.Authorship, contributorship, and acknowledgements are more controversial than might be assumed. In higher education, authorship has long been the currency for promotion and has prompted issues from author disputes to accusations of research misconduct. Authorship seems very finite-and in some views, plays to the elitism and marginalization that has become a widespread complaint in academia.Following the ongoing discussion that the Board has had about transparency and authorship, there was recently a decision to jump into the author role issue more actively. The CRediT taxonomy 2 has been at the center of many conversations (including a high-level recognition from NISO 3 ) and was used as the jumpoff point for this effort. The Consortia Advancing

Valuing a broad range of research contributions through Team Infrastructure Roles: Why CRediT is not enough

“…Nevertheless, there remains critique on the use and implementation of CrediT. Some studies argue that CRediT may not be generally applicable (see critical trials (Zhang et al, 2019), software development (Alliez et al, 2019) and library science (Fitzgerald et al, 2020)). Not all journals have implemented CRediT in a machine-readable manner or have failed to make this data available publicly (Shotton, 2017).…”

Considering Registered Reports at C&RL

“…Additionally, C&RL has recently made a commitment to authorship transparency in adopting portions of the CRediT taxonomy with a scheduled rollout for 2021. 12 Adding a registered reports submission track would help ensure that C&RL maintains these high standards but with a heightened awareness toward research methods. As previously stated, registered reports are considered one avenue for thwarting publication bias, p-hacking, and hypothesizing after results are known.…”