Transparent Attribution of Contributions to Research: Aligning Guidelines to Real-Life Practices

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This article is about a contributor role ontology called CRediT. It aims to improve the current list of roles and suggests new roles to make contributions more transparent. The arguments are presented clearly and the writing and formatting are exemplary. Nonetheless, it should be improved before publication. 

Some major issues are: 

the comparison of writing assistants and other contributors (especially statisticians) is not a good one as their roles differs in nature.

There is no mention of the details of contracts that are signed between researchers and writing assistants. For instance, one can argue that a freelance writing assistant who is eager to receive credit, should include this in his/her contract with the researcher(s).

The role of "Investigation" and proposed revisions to that come very abruptly. There is not enough background info or mention of the complexities of this role in research.

More specific feedback:

Line 37-39: a reference is missing.

Line 46: "in any discipline" is not mentioned in the used reference.

Line 53: "through our own work as authors’ editors [5-10]" => looks like padding to me.

Line 112-119: a very interesting analysis but with providing an example of an activity that should be acknowledged and is often not acknowledged, it will improve significantly.

Line 123-126: "despite efforts to encourage appropriate credit and accountability for non-authors, a number of factors make openness about non-author contributions a concept that is not valued equally across the spectrum of research publishing actors: 1) Compliance with institutional or editorial guidelines is essentially voluntary for byline authors." => This is not entirely true... encouraging appropriate credit and accountability is not (as far as I have seen in several universities) part of the editorial guidelines and is within the scope of the code of conduct which makes it non-voluntary!

Line 131-132: "5) Contributors such as statisticians – and especially authors’ editors and translators – are often self-employed and serve as externally contracted consultants." => a reference is missing.

Line 132-138: very confusing and unclear what the aim of this part is. The essence of it is something like: authors' editors and statisticians are independent and have their own clients, so they don't need the credit anyway. Some are shy to ask for being mentioned, nonetheless, some want it for getting more clients.

Line 189-192: The sentence finishes with "although they do not always specify how this should be done.", but then you provides examples that show that this is actually explained. To me, both the ICMJE and the Council of Editors mean the following: if you received assistance on writing, mention the name of writing assistants in the acknowledgment section.

Line 201-204: very interesting but it can improve if you could explain it better. One can argue that this is part of writing assistants' routine job and they were paid directly for this specific task, sometimes up to a few thousands... Your response to this argument can improve your analysis.

Line 271: Table 1

I strongly suggest that you stick to the writing/editing roles and leave other recommendations for another paper... Revising Investigation and adding Technical support are out of the scope of this paper unless you extend the introduction, and add a few more sections that delve into the ins and outs of these roles as well. Currently, you don't even scratch the surface of those roles, so it is better to keep the focus on writing support.

You suggest replacing "Writing-Original draft" with "Drafting the manuscript", you don't really explain why should this be changed and what is the benefit of this?

The suggested description for "Writing-original draft" reads: "Writing a preliminary version of the manuscript, by an author named in the byline or non-author named in the acknowledgments"=> CRediT is about contributions and NOT authorship, it seems like you are conflating the two, or you are basing this on the assumption that CRediT is a detailed authorship classification. Any mention of the author brings us back to the before-CRediT era!

The suggested description for "Writing-review and editing" reads: "Critical review with commenting or revising the manuscript, and approval of the version submitted for peer review and accepted for publication, by an author named in the byline"=> Once again, CRediT is about contributions and not authorship. That said, adding approval of the submitted version is a very good suggestion, but unfortunately, a better analysis is missing.

Line 277-278: "Yet it does not permit authors to attribute these roles to non-author contributors"=> the original role (i.e. Writing - Review and Editing) requires one to be from the original research group not to exclude non-authors, but to make sure that those who are named as contributors have been involved in the entire process that led to the publication.

Line 304: "The term “review” is often assumed to refer to peer review an activity carried out by journals, not authors." => This is inaccurate and based on a very narrow understanding of the word!

Line 305-306: "The term “editing”, in research publishing, is often used for work done by authors’ editors (before acceptance of a manuscript) and journals’ copy editors (after acceptance)." => again, this is inaccurate and based on a very narrow understanding of the word!

Line 310-314: This part is strange! if you have an example (i.e. a correction or erratum notice), how can you claim that it is realistically not possible?

Line 317: "the increasingly important roles of authors’ editors and translators in research publishing"=> this needs a reference, especially because earlier you said: "no data are publicly available on the number of research articles that benefit from editorial support"

Author Response

Publications 452214 Transparent attribution of contributions to research: aligning guidelines to real-life practices

Reviewer 1 02 Mar 2019 18:31:17

This article is about a contributor role ontology called CRediT. It aims to improve the current list of roles and suggests new roles to make contributions more transparent. The arguments are presented clearly and the writing and formatting are exemplary. Nonetheless, it should be improved before publication.

We thank the reviewer for these interesting reactions and points of view, which have led us to reconsider and revise parts of the manuscript as explained below.

Some major issues are:

1. The comparison of writing assistants and other contributors (especially statisticians) is not a good one as their roles differs in nature.

    Our essay looks at non-author contributor roles that are affected by CRediT. We feel that the inclusion of comments about technical and statistical support makes our argument clearer and more relevant, especially as we believe that many readers will be aware of the often substantial roles of technicians and independent statisticians. One of us (V.M.) has worked as both a technician and researcher, and has experienced first-hand how decisions made by superiors determine whether one is an author, an acknowledgee or  neither despite having done substantial laboratory work. We feel the comparison is useful to show that the issues we raise are not just a problem for editorial support professionals but also for other types of acknowledgees. The actual roles they do is not of relevance to our argument.

2. There is no mention of the details of contracts that are signed between researchers and writing assistants. For instance, one can argue that a freelance writing assistant who is eager to receive credit, should include this in his/her contract with the researcher(s). No data on how often these contracts are used.

    We agree that terms and conditions should be specified in a contract between a freelance writing assistant and the client. But we are aware from real-world practice that very often, no such contract is used, and when one is used it is prepared by lawyers of the research institute, leaving the language professional little say in the matter. Data reported at METM18 (references 33 and 34 in our manuscript; now references 37 and 38) showed that regardless of whether a contract is used, some writing assistants do not require acknowledgment or credit. We are not aware of any other published research on how often contracts are used, and since our article focuses on credit and acknowledgment rather than on writing assistants’ business practices, we feel that it would be off-topic and off-focus to include this topic in this paper. Our concern is also to avoid making the article any longer than it already is.

3. The role of "Investigation" and proposed revisions to that come very abruptly. There is not enough background info or mention of the complexities of this role in research.

    We appreciate the reviewer’s attention to logical flow in our manuscript. But this comment does not refer to a specific place where this issue arises, so we are not clear on where revisions should be made. If the reviewer is referring to the role of “Investigation” as used in the current CRediT system and our proposed modifications, we feel it would not be helpful to elaborate further on this because we have to follow the usage in the CRediT system. We assume that “investigation” is a synonym for “research” in the CRediT category definitions.

More specific feedback:

4. Line 37-39: a reference is missing.

    Thank you for this observation. This statement summarizes our learning and perceptions based on 57 years of experience (22 for V.M. and 35 for K.S.), and expresses views shared by many experts in research publishing going back a few decades. Examples of critical research on publication policies have been published in Publications, as we note in the previous paragraph. To clarify this further, we have revised the second sentence and added two references:

5. Line 46: "in any discipline" is not mentioned in the used reference.  

    Thank you for pointing this out. We have reread reference 3 (now reference 6) and see that it explicitly states “for use in scientific publications”. We have therefore changed the phrase to “in anyscientificdiscipline”.

6. Line 53: "through our own work as authors’ editors [5-10]" => looks like padding to me.

    We understand that it sounds like self-promotion, but feel it is important information for the sake of transparency. We are signaling to readers where our specific expertise and experience lie. We hope readers who are journal editors and reviewers, policy makers, and research evaluators (in addition to our own colleagues) will read the article, so it is important for readers to be aware that our point of view is that of a specific type of contributor to research dissemination.

7. Line 112-119: a very interesting analysis but with providing an example of an activity that should be acknowledged and is often not acknowledged, it will improve significantly.

    Thank you for this suggestion. We have edited lines 118-119 (now lines 120-122) to read: “The absence of an acknowledgment does not necessarily mean that the study did not benefit from important non-author support. There may have been additional contributions (by technicians, statisticians or editorial support professionals), but…”.

8. Line 123-126: "despite efforts to encourage appropriate credit and accountability for non-authors, a number of factors make openness about non-author contributions a concept that is not valued equally across the spectrum of research publishing actors: 1) Compliance with institutional or editorial guidelines is essentially voluntary for byline authors." => This is not entirely true... encouraging appropriate credit and accountability is not (as far as I have seen in several universities) part of the editorial guidelines and is within the scope of the code of conduct which makes it non-voluntary!

    Yes, we agree that it is within the scope of institutional codes of conduct, but there is evidence (on the Retraction Watch and For Better Science blogs, for example, which are written by journalists specialized in research publication ethics) that when the code of conduct is violated, institutions do not always make much effort to investigate or oblige noncompliers to comply. Compliance is expected based on an honor system that is unfortunately not always backed up by strong institutional policies to monitor or ensure compliance. This reality, unfortunately, is a consequence of institutional conflicts of interest and the desire to avoid unfavorable media attention and damage to their reputation. So we are comfortable making this claim, although we know some readers may disagree with it. Please note that our use of “essentially” to qualify the statement emphasizes that we mean “in practice”, as opposed to “in theory”.

9. Line 131-132: "5) Contributors such as statisticians – and especially authors’ editors and translators – are often self-employed and serve as externally contracted consultants." => a reference is missing.

    This statement is based on our familiarity with our own profession and the medical writing profession, where many practitioners (like us) are self-employed. We worded this cautiously with the qualifier “often”, and do not feel that references are necessary to support this statement. References, if available, may not be accurate or useful: because of data protection regulations, many professional development associations do not provide statistics on the employment status of their members.

10. Line 132-138: very confusing and unclear what the aim of this part is. The essence of it is something like: authors' editors and statisticians are independent and have their own clients, so they don't need the credit anyway. Some are shy to ask for being mentioned, nonetheless, some want it for getting more clients.

    Thank you for drawing attention to a part of the manuscript you feel is confusing. The aim of this part is to explain why real-world practices differ among the types of contributors we mention and among individuals who have different motivations. We have reread this part several times, but cannot see any opportunities where rewriting it would make our meaning any clearer. Your understanding is accurate, and although “little inclination to request public credit” could be interpreted as shyness, please note the sentence continues by explaining a possible motivation: “if they believe their clients might find this issue awkward, intrusive or inappropriate.”

    We realize that some readers will not be as familiar with our profession as we are, and feel it is important for all stakeholders in research publishing to have this information about the real variations in professional practice.  

11. Line 189-192: The sentence finishes with "although they do not always specify how this should be done.", but then you provides examples that show that this is actually explained. To me, both the ICMJE and the Council of Editors mean the following: if you received assistance on writing, mention the name of writing assistants in the acknowledgment section.

    Thank you for pointing out this issue. We have edited this sentence to read: “although they do not always specify which wording or terms are preferable”.

    Yes, the ICMJE and Council of Science Editors are clear about acknowledgment for writing assistance. What they do not specify is the preferred wording to clarify the type and extent of support that was provided (e.g. translation, translation with editing, language editing, substantive editing, developmental editing). Only the AMA Manual of Style gives an example of how this can be done. Note that in the opening sentence of the paragraph, our use of “do not always” signals this one exception, whereas the other guidelines mentioned do not provide examples.

12. Line 201-204: very interesting but it can improve if you could explain it better. One can argue that this is part of writing assistants' routine job and they were paid directly for this specific task, sometimes up to a few thousands... Your response to this argument can improve your analysis.

    Thank you for confirming that it is interesting. This is one of the parts of the article where we try to point out areas of controversy and potential conflict, in the hope that other researchers will take an interest in investigating the issues further.

    We understand your view that if the writing assistant is paid, there is nothing unusual about the situation because it is simply a payment for services. However, this article is not intended to focus on business practices or rates of pay, and we are afraid that if we try to lengthen the text here by going into the question of payment, this information would interfere with our focus on credit and acknowledgment and be found distracting and off-topic by many readers.

    We have reread this part several times, but cannot see any opportunities where rewriting it would make our arguments any clearer. At this point in the article, it is important to summarize the information in the previous sections and draw a basic conclusion, in order to provide a logical transition to the next section of the article. We think the text as it stands does this job well for readers.

13. Line 271: Table 1

I strongly suggest that you stick to the writing/editing roles and leave other recommendations for another paper... Revising Investigation and adding Technical support are out of the scope of this paper unless you extend the introduction, and add a few more sections that delve into the ins and outs of these roles as well. Currently, you don't even scratch the surface of those roles, so it is better to keep the focus on writing support.

    Thank you for this suggestion. The focus is indeed on writing support but we also feel it is important to note briefly that other types of contributions are at risk for being marginalized in the current CRediT system.  

    We understand why you feel our suggestions regarding the other roles are distracting, but for the sake of fairness to other contributors in other professions different from ours (who are mentioned briefly earlier in the article), we believe it is important not to leave them out of our suggestions for improving CRediT.  

    To include more context about these roles, we have added this sentence and reference (lines 111-114): “An analysis of more than 1 million acknowledgments indexed in Web of Science in 2015 found that technical support was most often acknowledged by authors in the fields of chemistry, physics and engineering, while feedback from colleagues was most often acknowledged by social scientists [36].”

14. You suggest replacing "Writing-Original draft" with "Drafting the manuscript", you don't really explain why should this be changed and what is the benefit of this?

    This is explained in lines 360 to 363. This suggestion is intended to distinguish clearly between what the named authors do and what the non-author contributors do.

15. The suggested description for "Writing-original draft" reads: "Writing a preliminary version of the manuscript, by an author named in the byline or non-author named in the acknowledgments"=> CRediT is about contributions and NOT authorship, it seems like you are conflating the two, or you are basing this on the assumption that CRediT is a detailed authorship classification. Any mention of the author brings us back to the before-CRediT era!

    Thank you for alerting us to this potential confusion. The premise of our article is that with regard to different stages in the manuscript drafting, revising and editing process, CRediT is unable to attribute all the different contributions accurately and transparently.

    Our analysis of this shortcoming in CRediT derives from our expertise in language and writing, and our knowledge about the process of research writing, editing and publishing. We work closely with researchers (more closely than journal editors and peer reviewers), and realize that the developers and users of CRediT probably do not know as much about the whole complicated process by which researchers think, draft, revise, check and correct their manuscripts. We hope that insights from our direct experience and that of our colleagues can be used to inform future improvements in the CRediT system.  

    As currently used, CRediT is essentially a sophisticated tool to indicate authorship but unfortunately does not provide a good system for recognizing other contributions to manuscript writing. This is precisely the limitation of the current iteration of CRediT that we hope our article will help overcome.  It is important to remember that, as noted in line 223, “CRediT has not yet been formally tested for accuracy or validity”. Other places in our article that emphasize this point are:

Lines 48-50: “…our analysis suggests that CRediT is essentially a detailed authorship classification in conflict with how contributorship was initially conceived [7], and that its implementation risks depriving non-author contributors of due credit.”

Lines 272-276: “First, as implemented in Editorial Manager, CRediT is only applicable to byline authors; none of the roles can be assigned to acknowledgees. Moreover, CRediT ignores at least three types of non-author contributors (Table 1) and induces named authors to attribute these roles to themselves, thus creating the potential for contradictory or misleading information to be passed on to readers and research evaluators.”

Lines 348-350: “The changes we propose would enable the taxonomy to fulfill its initial aim, namely to “capture all the work that allows scholarly publications to be produced” including that done by contributors “named in acknowledgments”.

Lines 369-370: “Importantly, these changes clearly distinguish between authors’ revisions of the manuscript and changes to the manuscript made by a non-author editor or translator.”

Lines 374-377: “The changes we propose here, although small, would make the allocation of credit and responsibility for editorial and technical support substantially more transparent, and would reflect current real-world practices more accurately.”

Lines 383-385: “…CRediT should be applicable not only to byline authors but to all contributors, as it was initially conceived. If this cannot be achieved, the ability of the CRediT taxa to accurately and transparently reflect all contributors to published research will remain limited.”

16. The suggested description for "Writing-review and editing" reads: "Critical review with commenting or revising the manuscript, and approval of the version submitted for peer review and accepted for publication, by an author named in the byline"=> Once again, CRediT is about contributions and not authorship. That said, adding approval of the submitted version is a very good suggestion, but unfortunately, a better analysis is missing.

    We wish we could agree with the reviewer that CRediT is about contributorship rather than authorship, but believe that this is not the case with CRediT in its current form, as shown in the quotations given above. Because research evaluation, promotion and funding decisions are closely related to authorship (i.e. being named in the byline at the top of the article), the label “author” remains important.

    Although we tried to understand what you mean by “a better analysis”, we are unable to determine what you would like us to analyze in more depth. As noted in some of our replies to other suggestions, we feel that we have analyzed and discussed the points relating to the specific roles of authors and other contributors in sufficient detail for readers to understand why we have offered suggestions on some of the CRediT taxa in Sections 4, 5 and 6.

17. Line 277-278: "Yet it does not permit authors to attribute these roles to non-author contributors"=> the original role (i.e. Writing - Review and Editing) requires one to be from the original research group not to exclude non-authors, but to make sure that those who are named as contributors have been involved in the entire process that led to the publication.

    Yes, we agree completely with this understanding of the criteria authors named in the byline should meet. The argument we offer is that translators, authors’ editors and medical writers, like other non-author contributors, are not responsible for the choice of research topic, the design and execution of the research, the analysis, or the conclusions. Their contributions affect only some technical or communication-related aspects of the whole process of publication. But because these types of contributions are often necessary, they should be included as options in the list of CRediT categories.

    We feel it is useful to readers and users of CRediT to emphasize the differences between authors and non-author contributors in terms of the level of accountability and responsibility for the actual scientific content of research articles, because non-author contributors are never involved in the entire process that led to publication. This is why we suggest our revised taxon “Critical review and approval of the manuscript, as author” as a replacement for the original taxon “Writing – Review & Editing” as noted in Table 1.

18. Line 304: "The term “review” is often assumed to refer to peer review an activity carried out by journals, not authors." => This is inaccurate and based on a very narrow understanding of the word!

    We appreciate the reviewer’s attention to terms and their assumed or implicit meaning. We phrased this as “is often assumed” because this is what we see in many articles about research publishing. To improve clarity, we have revised the sentence as follows: “The term “review” is often assumed to refer to peer review – an activity coordinated by journals with external experts, not carried out by the authors themselves”.

    We know that the definition of “review” depends on the context, and that different readers will assume it means different things based on their own background and knowledge. We were careful to hedge this statement with the phrase “is often assumed” precisely for this reason. When researchers, journal editors and publishers see the word “review” they tend to assume it means “peer review” or “manuscript review”. When editorial support professionals see the word “review” we first determine whether “peer review” (as part of the publisher’s process, not controlled by authors) is meant, or whether critical reading and revision by the authors (under the authors’ control as part of the presubmission or post-peer-review writing and revising process) is meant.

19. Line 305-306: "The term “editing”, in research publishing, is often used for work done by authors’ editors (before acceptance of a manuscript) and journals’ copy editors (after acceptance)." => again, this is inaccurate and based on a very narrow understanding of the word!

    Again, we appreciate the reviewer’s attention to terms and definitions; this is an area we are particularly interested in, because in editorials and articles by journal editors and publishing experts, we often see the term “editor” used to refer only to journal editors who make acceptance/rejection decisions but who often do not “edit” the text themselves in the sense of improving the language and style (although we know that at small journals the gatekeeper editor may well also be the copyeditor). Here again, we phrased this carefully with the qualifier “often” because we know that “to edit” and “editor” mean different things to different people involved in research publishing.

    As editorial support professionals concerned with precision and clarity, we discussed the different types of “editor” here https://f1000research.com/articles/7-109/v2 .

20. Line 310-314: This part is strange! if you have an example (i.e. a correction or erratum notice), how can you claim that it is realistically not possible?

    It looks strange, but because published corrections and erratum notices are extremely rare (even when errors are reported to the journal or the authors by readers), our sense is that this wording in the definition of the original “Writing – Review & Editing” taxon was due (ironically) to a writing and editing oversight, because we are 95% sure that the authors of the CRediT system are familiar with all steps in the journal publication process.  After acceptance, all contributors’ contributions (both authors and non-authors) are finished (except for proof correction by the authors, which is still a pre-publication step). Whatever happens to the article thereafter is the responsibility of the journal’s post-acceptance editorial and production staff, as explained in the phrase “since publication usually signals the end of the authors’ work on an article”.

Please note that the words “Few...” and “unless” in this sentence signal appropriate hedging to mean that in most (but not all) cases, post-publication changes by the authors are not possible.

21. Line 317: "the increasingly important roles of authors’ editors and translators in research publishing"=> this needs a reference, especially because earlier you said: "no data are publicly available on the number of research articles that benefit from editorial support"

    We understand that references would be helpful to support this statement, but at this time we are comfortable making this claim based on several sources of strong, real-world evidence. For example, the demand for our own freelance services and those of many colleagues around the world has risen in recent decades, national and international professional development organizations specifically for editorial support professionals are being created and are constantly attracting new members (see, for example, Table 1 in https://f1000research.com/articles/7-109/v2 ), multinational editorial and language service companies such as Edanz, Editage, Enago and American Journal Experts have grown, and all major research journal publishers now advise authors to obtain editorial support from such companies (or elsewhere) if their first language is not English.

Reviewer 2 Report

The first two paragraphs of the introduction would benefit from additional description, qualification, or support. For example, the authors mention a "growing number of studies" but none of these studies are described or cited. I would also like to see evidence that stakeholders "increasingly [value]" openness and that "publication policies are based on ... widely held but unverified assumptions." What assumptions? How do we know this is true? 

Lines 62-67: I stumbled over these sentences, which strike me as rather long and complex. Consider clarifying them, perhaps by merging the sentences beginning "Authorship criteria..." and "A large multidisciplinary study..."

Lines 67: The authors might qualify this statement to acknowledge that "researchers in French clinical settings" are hardly representative of all authors or their knowledge of authorship criteria.

Line 122: "...for a variety of reasons." Can you supply some of those reasons here or assure readers that explanations are forthcoming? 

Lines 125-126: Is this true? Might not a paper be returned or rejected outright if an author disregards editorial guidelines?

Lines 125-131: This would be more comprehensible were it formatted as an indented list, with each item given its own line. 

Lines 152-154: This restates the preceding sentence and is therefore redundant.   

182-188: There's much speculation here. Can you offer some evidence in support of these claims or at least indicate that further research is needed to verify these attitudes and (dis)inclinations?

Line 226: Can you explain the significance of this acquisition? Otherwise this short sentence seems incidental to your argument. 

Line 266: The accuracy of CRediT's taxa and the inflexible implementation of those taxa are two separate problems. It might be worth further nuancing this point in order to direct your article to those readers who would most benefit from its instruction, e.g., the UI/software engineers who build journal submission platforms. 

Line 283: I found this sentence initially puzzling. You might include an aside describing the nature or purpose of this fiction. 

Line 383: This is such a good point. You anticipate ways that CRediT data might be misused. One of the most persuasive and interesting points in your paper. 

Line 406-410: I doubt this claim. Only biomedicine has "shared spaces" where "editorial support professionals...can work together"? 

I noticed a few sentences (lines 32, 36, 178, 327, 382) that would improve were a weak verb replaced with a stronger, more descriptive one. 

Author Response

Publications 452214 Transparent attribution of contributions to research: aligning guidelines to real-life practices 

Reviewer 2 22 Feb 2019 19:45:22

Thank you for your careful reading and feedback on our writing, which has prompted us to revise the manuscript as detailed below.

1. The first two paragraphs of the introduction would benefit from additional description, qualification, or support. For example, the authors mention a "growing number of studies" but none of these studies are described or cited. I would also like to see evidence that stakeholders "increasingly [value]" openness and that "publication policies are based on ... widely held but unverified assumptions." What assumptions? How do we know this is true?

    We understand why readers would like to see references here. Our "growing number of studies" phrase in the Introduction was intended to say that the issues we talk about are attracting increasing attention, as indicated by the fact that the number and frequency of such studies are increasing in several disciplines. It is not our aim to summarize the content of these studies here in the Introduction. But we do draw readers’ attention to the fact thatPublications has published many examples of this research, and have added reference 1 as further support.  

    Our “increasingly value openness” phrase reflects one of the premises of this special issue of Publications, and is intended as stage-setting information. We have revised this part of the Introduction and added reference 2 as further support.

    Our mention of “widely held but unverified assumptions” reflects our own experience in research publishing as authors, reviewers and editors, and also reflects the growth in research about (among other topics) peer review methods and publication models. We have added reference 3 to further support this statement.

2. Lines 62-67: I stumbled over these sentences, which strike me as rather long and complex. Consider clarifying them, perhaps by merging the sentences beginning "Authorship criteria..." and "A large multidisciplinary study..."

    Thank you for this suggestion. Merging these two sentences would result is a very long sentence that some readers would probably also stumble over, particularly since the second sentence already has a semicolon. As an alternative, we have revised this part as follows (lines 62-67):

    “Authorship criteria today are produced by scientific societies, funders, professional associations, publishers and academic institutions. According to a large multidisciplinary survey, authorship definitions are more common in the sciences than in the humanities, and more likely to appear in journals’ instructions to authors than in disciplinary societies’ ethics codes [15]. The authors suggested that variations among policies may create confusion and hinder good authorship practices.”

3. Lines 67: The authors might qualify this statement to acknowledge that "researchers in French clinical settings" are hardly representative of all authors or their knowledge of authorship criteria.

    Thank you for this suggestion. Reference 13 (now 16) is from France but reference 14 (now 17), cited in the same context, is from Canada. We cite these two articles, among several on the same topic, because they were from developed economies where researchers may be more or less well informed about authorship and other aspects of publications ethics. We wrote “different academic settings” to signal that we were presenting cases, not data that could be generalized. To further clarify this point we have added “e.g.” in front of reference numbers 16 and 17. Our use of “e.g.” and  “different academic settings” are sufficient, we feel, to communicate the limited extent of generalizability of the data and thus avoid lengthening the text with unnecessary detail.

4. Line 122: "...for a variety of reasons." Can you supply some of those reasons here or assure readers that explanations are forthcoming?

    Thank you for this comment. We have revised this sentence as follows to assure readers that explanations are forthcoming: “ … do not consider acknowledgment necessary or even desirable, for a variety of reasons (see Section 3 and [37,38]).”

5. Lines 125-126: Is this true? Might not a paper be returned or rejected outright if an author disregards editorial guidelines? (“1) Compliance with institutional or editorial guidelines is essentially voluntary for byline authors.”)

    Whether editorial guidelines are requirements or “just” recommendations varies from journal to journal. Some journals warn on their websites that they will desk-reject manuscripts that do not follow the journal's policies, but that threat appears to be rarely acted upon except at very high-impact-factor journals or the few journals with the resources to verify the information authors provide.

    The criteria for desk rejection differ among journals, because of widely varying, nonstandardized editorial policies and practices. There are many examples of published articles (even in very prestigious journals) that do not fully comply with the journal’s policies for transparency and openness in authorship, potential conflicts of interest, funding sources, data deposition, or clinical trial registration, even in journals that warn authors that any of these violations might lead to immediate rejection without review.

6. Lines 125-131: This would be more comprehensible were it formatted as an indented list, with each item given its own line.

    Okay. We have reformatted this as a numbered list.

7. Lines 152-154: This restates the preceding sentence and is therefore redundant. 

    Okay. We have deleted this sentence.

8. Lines 182-188: There's much speculation here. Can you offer some evidence in support of these claims or at least indicate that further research is needed to verify these attitudes and (dis)inclinations?

    Thank you for this comment. We are happy to add a sentence at the end of this paragraph to encourage additional research, because inquiry into editorial support processes in research publishing is indeed still young. The comments in this paragraph are not our own speculation at the moment, but a summary of observations and realities that came out of discussions among colleagues as cited. To signal this point, we have added “For example” at the beginning of this sentence: “For example, because they lack control over the manuscript...” (line 179 in the revised manuscript).

    We understand that because little research specifically about research translators’ and authors’ editors’ practices has been published, some of the information in this section could be usefully interpreted as hypotheses awaiting further study. Nonetheless, we feel strongly that it is important for readers to learn more about the ways editorial support professionals work with researcher-authors, because we know from personal experience that journal editors and publishers are mostly unaware of the contributions these people make to research publishing.

9. Line 226: Can you explain the significance of this acquisition? Otherwise this short sentence seems incidental to your argument.

    Thank you for this comment. We have revised a few sentences here to improve the flow of information and clarify the significance of this acquisition.

10. Line 266: The accuracy of CRediT's taxa and the inflexible implementation of those taxa are two separate problems. It might be worth further nuancing this point in order to direct your article to those readers who would most benefit from its instruction, e.g., the UI/software engineers who build journal submission platforms.

    We agree it would be useful for UI/software engineers to be made aware of issues such as those we discuss here with one particular digital tool. However, we suspect that these professionals don’t read articles about research editing, writing and publishing, and so when we wrote the article, we considered them outside our intended readership. We are not experts in knowledge management software and feel there is little we could add to the manuscript that would be meaningful to members of the software development profession.

    UI/software engineers with enough curiosity will find this and similar articles if they search outside their “usual” sources. However, they are probably not the ones who make decisions about the terms and definitions used to build any given software. Those decisions would be made by their clients (e.g. publishers, indexers, metaanalysts, funders, academic promotion/reward bodies).

11. Line 283: I found this sentence initially puzzling. You might include an aside describing the nature or purpose of this fiction.

    Thank you for this suggestion. We have added the phrase “the often-cited example of” in this sentence to clarify the nature of this reference.

    This teaching example comes from a classic textbook written to respond to the US Public Health Services’ requirements for training in research ethics (see comment in DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0040084). This particular example is used by governmental agencies and scientific associations around the world to teach research ethics. (This can be verified by Googling <“Colleen May” neurologist>)

12. Line 383: This is such a good point. You anticipate ways that CRediT data might be misused. One of the most persuasive and interesting points in your paper.

    Thank you for your supportive feedback. We hope our article will sensitize users of CRediT to its potential shortcomings, and will encourage the current owners to re-examine the categories and definitions to the benefit of greater accuracy, openness and accountability for all contributors.

13. Line 406-410: I doubt this claim. Only biomedicine has "shared spaces" where "editorial support professionals...can work together"?

    We know of no similar efforts in other research areas to bring gatekeepers, communication or language professionals, and researchers together. We are comfortable making this claim – but would be very happy if we were wrong about it! MDPI Publications is, we hope, one potentially useful space where all participants in knowledge creation, dissemination and evaluation can learn from each other.

    As editorial support professionals ourselves, we are unaware of such spaces, with the possible exception of the European Association of Science Editors and the Council of Science Editors – although these organizations have become increasingly focused on publishers and journal editors to the detriment of input from editorial support professionals who work with researcher-authors. In our experience with on-line forums and face-to-face events (conferences, workshops, seminars, meetings) for research publication professionals, and from our reading of the journalology literature, our impression is that many journal editors and publishers, policy makers, and researchers are unaware of or do not understand our work – perhaps, in part, because not all contributions from contributors in our professionals are acknowledged in published material.

14. I noticed a few sentences (lines 32, 36, 178, 327, 382) that would improve were a weak verb replaced with a stronger, more descriptive one.

    Thank you for this comment. We used the passive voice intentionally in these places to support our choice of theme-rheme structure between sentences. We know it can be boring for some readers, but feel that our decisions on when to use active or passive voice are suitable for the ideas we are communicating.  

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is very nicely presented. I have just a few comments and suggestions, and I’ll present them not in order of importance (nothing is critical) but in order of appearance.

TITLE: Since the article focuses on CRediT, I feel the title could be more specific. As written, the title seems to invoke a more general commentary rather than an assessment of a specific tool.

ABSTRACT (Comment 1): Please be more specific about the chronology. You mention (lines 11–12) that “the term ‘contributorship’ was coined” and (line 16) that CRediT “was created.” The passive construction left me wondering what you were trying to hide. From the text, I inferred that “contributorship” was coined in 1997 and that CRediT was created no earlier than 2012; but more specificity would help situate the study—and would emphasize its freshness and relevance.

ABSTRACT (Comment 2): In line 16, you refer to your “analysis”; I’d suggest that assessment is a better term. Analysis, to me, implies that you’ll be presenting a method—something that a reader could replicate.

ABSTRACT (Comment 3): In line 22, regarding the verb explain: I’d accept explain if, in fact, you had carried out a study where you asked or surveyed other researchers about their practices, thus seeking their underlying logic or motives. In the absence of such a survey, I’d recommend suggest over explain—since you’re trying to explain others’ actions.

THROUGHOUT: Please do be careful with the serial comma. My preference, in academic writing, is always to use the serial comma. But in this manuscript, the serial comma is omitted more frequently than it is used. I noted eleven instances (there could be more) that therefore feel inconsistent. If you believe some of these commas are aids to comprehension given the syntax of the particular sentences, I’d urge you to use serial commas consistently throughout the manuscript. Those that show up (and that I noticed) appear in lines 30, 52, 101, 158, 220, 243, 277, 279, 331, 383, and 414.

LINE 42: You mention “A relatively recent attempt to systematize. . .”; a chronological marker, here, would be nice as well. (In the absence of CRediT being temporalized in the abstract, I’d say that inserting a year here is a must. But I’d still insert a year in the abstract.)

LINE 101: Another source that could join entries 27 and 28 is this open-access book (freely downloadable from the publisher’s website) by Laura R. Micciche: Acknowledging Writing Partners (Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2017). Micciche focuses on the humanities and includes, as “acknowledges” (your term), situations (fellowships, academic leaves, retreats, symposia, conference gatherings, serendipitous encounters) and sources of inspiration and assistance (grants, colleagues, contributors, students, friends, family members, organizations, librarians, reviewers, editors, other publishing personnel, even pets).

LINE 106: The “about 10% to 30%” phrase feels needlessly vague; but maybe it’s necessary given that you are referring to “the first decades of the 1900s” (where, I imagine, some variation was at play). Exuding more confidence would be to choose a decade and report a specific percentage (instead of such a wide range). For effect, you could choose a particularly low one. Or maybe I’m just responding to the qualifier “about” here, since the range feels too broad for “about” to be appropriate. There’s nothing wrong with reporting the range: “between 10% and 30%” would be fine.

LINE 115: Note consistency. Earlier (and later), you refer to “the Acknowledgements section(s),” with a capital A. (Yes, I realize the difference between generic acknowledgements and the term as the “title” of a section, which seems to be the differentiation you are invoking here.)

LINES 131–38: Interesting. I was expecting that you’d bring up the fact that the externally contracted consultants are remunerated for their work. As such, part of the contractual element of such work might exclude the expectation of being acknowledged as playing a part in a research project. (In other words, in lieu of being named as a co-author or contributor, you are being paid for your services. Feasibly, a consultant could charge nothing yet be asked to be included as a co-author or contributor in return.) This point feels very important to me!

LINES 163–64: Do you mean translation services here? (I ask because the previous paragraph concerns contracted services.) I know plenty of scholars for whom English is not their first language who write their research papers in their native language and then translate them into English themselves before contracting someone to conduct what you’d refer to as either “substantive editing” or just “language editing.” (By the way, they’re undertaking these translations simply because they’re aiming to have their work published in English-language journals.)

LINES 186–88: Very interesting! This issue is clearly being presented from the ESL perspective. Scholars for whom English is their native language—at least in the humanities—seem to have no qualms about acknowledging editorial support. In certain fields, in fact (religious studies, comparative literature), acknowledging referees’ comments and editorial suggestions used to be quite commonplace, particularly by younger scholars who wished to express their appreciation for the comments and attention of their seniors. (And I say “used to be” only because some younger scholars, in the U.S.A., at least, seem not to have been taught the politeness of such acknowledgements in recent years. Gender studies is perhaps an outlier of generosity, openness, and transparency: scholars in this field have seemingly become more willing to acknowledge assistance—in line with the very ethics of the field, of course.)

LINES 224–31: Please ensure that someone on the production side fixes the spacing within these justified lines (vis-à-vis the URLs).

LINES 266–67: Oh! That’s a huge weakness of CRediT!

LINES 298–99: Good point about translation—unless you’re referring to the translation of data required to carry out a research project. (I’ve carried out qualitative studies abroad and required short-answer written survey results to be translated. The translator I retained for that project was not involved in writing any portion of the resultant manuscript—but was certainly worthy of being acknowledged.)

LINE 310: The “pre- or post-publication stages” language just seems wrong. I think they meant “pre- or post-acceptance stages,” didn’t they? (But I understand you’re just quoting the definition put forth by CRediT.) Anyway, I’m glad you recommend removing that language in lines 359–60.

LINE 361: Perhaps you should set off the name of your new category with commas.

UPON FURTHER REFLECTION: I didn’t realize this point while I was reading the article, but I suppose I expected more to be made of the issue of authors writing in English as a non-primary language: I would presume that the various levels of “authors’ editors” have, as clientele, larger numbers of non-native writers (in English). In my view, the consideration in the paragraph at lines 174–88 is a direct function of whether the author (from whatever discipline) is operating in her or his native language or a secondary language.

Author Response

Publications 452214 Transparent attribution of contributions to research: aligning guidelines to real-life practices

Reviewer 3  19 Feb 2019 22:13:43

Thank you for your careful reading and feedback, which has prompted us to revise the manuscript as detailed below.

This paper is very nicely presented. I have just a few comments and suggestions, and I’ll present them not in order of importance (nothing is critical) but in order of appearance.

    It’s true that this article focuses on the CRediT system. We intentionally made our title more generic, because we wish to draw readers’ attention to gaps in policies and practices about appropriate attribution of credit and accountability for contributors who are not byline authors.

    We feel the title is effective as is, but if the editors of this special issue feel it should be changed, we will defer to their decision. Since people who do online literature searches will see our abstract together with the title, they will be able to quickly see the focus on CRediT and then decide whether to retrieve the full article or not.

2.  ABSTRACT (Comment 1): Please be more specific about the chronology. You mention (lines 11–12) that “the term ‘contributorship’ was coined” and (line 16) that CRediT “was created.” The passive construction left me wondering what you were trying to hide. From the text, I inferred that “contributorship” was coined in 1997 and that CRediT was created no earlier than 2012; but more specificity would help situate the study—and would emphasize its freshness and relevance.

    Thank you for this advice. We have edited the Abstract to add the relevant years.

3. ABSTRACT (Comment 2): In line 16, you refer to your “analysis”; I’d suggest that assessment is a better term. Analysis, to me, implies that you’ll be presenting a method—something that a reader could replicate.

    We have used the word “assessment” instead of “analysis”.  

4. ABSTRACT (Comment 3): In line 22, regarding the verb explain: I’d accept explain if, in fact, you had carried out a study where you asked or surveyed other researchers about their practices, thus seeking their underlying logic or motives. In the absence of such a survey, I’d recommend suggest over explain—since you’re trying to explain others’ actions.

    We understand your preference for “suggest” but since we provide explanations based on various sources of information as documented in our manuscript, we feel “explain” is an appropriate word choice here.

5. THROUGHOUT: Please do be careful with the serial comma. My preference, in academic writing, is always to use the serial comma. But in this manuscript, the serial comma is omitted more frequently than it is used. I noted eleven instances (there could be more) that therefore feel inconsistent. If you believe some of these commas are aids to comprehension given the syntax of the particular sentences, I’d urge you to use serial commas consistently throughout the manuscript. Those that show up (and that I noticed) appear in lines 30, 52, 101, 158, 220, 243, 277, 279, 331, 383, and 414.

    We have checked the use of serial commas throughout the manuscript, and although our preference is to omit them when they are not necessary for comprehension (e.g., when the  examples listed consist of only 1 or 2 words), we have added a few serial commas to better demarcate longer or more semantically complex examples in the series.

6. LINE 42: You mention “A relatively recent attempt to systematize. . .”; a chronological marker, here, would be nice as well. (In the absence of CRediT being temporalized in the abstract, I’d say that inserting a year here is a must. But I’d still insert a year in the abstract.)

    The year has been added in the Abstract. In the sentence that begins with “A relatively recent attempt to systematize…” ends with a link to the CRediT website, where readers can check the date. We have also added the year in the revised text here to clarify the chronology.

7. LINE 101: Another source that could join entries 27 and 28 is this open-access book (freely downloadable from the publisher’s website) by Laura R. Micciche: Acknowledging Writing Partners (Fort Collins: The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2017). Micciche focuses on the humanities and includes, as “acknowledges” (your term), situations (fellowships, academic leaves, retreats, symposia, conference gatherings, serendipitous encounters) and sources of inspiration and assistance (grants, colleagues, contributors, students, friends, family members, organizations, librarians, reviewers, editors, other publishing personnel, even pets).

    Thank you for this interesting reference. We looked through the whole book but found nothing about editorial support, text or manuscript editing, authors’ editors or translators, or the process of drafting, revising editing or otherwise shaping texts in research articles. We could not find the term “acknowledgee” anywhere. The types of acknowledgments discussed in the book (to animals, emotions, and time) are not found in the scientific articles that CRediT addresses.  Although it’s an interesting in-depth analysis of acknowledgment practices in humanities books, we feel it would not be a relevant source to cite in our manuscript.  

8. LINE 106: The “about 10% to 30%” phrase feels needlessly vague; but maybe it’s necessary given that you are referring to “the first decades of the 1900s” (where, I imagine, some variation was at play). Exuding more confidence would be to choose a decade and report a specific percentage (instead of such a wide range). For effect, you could choose a particularly low one. Or maybe I’m just responding to the qualifier “about” here, since the range feels too broad for “about” to be appropriate. There’s nothing wrong with reporting the range: “between 10% and 30%” would be fine.

    The sentence has been revised as follows: For example, of 2707 articles published in Psychological Review, 10% to 24% had acknowledgments in the first five decades of the 1900s, while this proportion exceeded 90% in the last three decades [31].

9. LINE 115: Note consistency. Earlier (and later), you refer to “the Acknowledgements section(s),” with a capital A. (Yes, I realize the difference between generic acknowledgements and the term as the “title” of a section, which seems to be the differentiation you are invoking here.)

    Thank you for pointing this out. We intended to use the capital letter when referring to the section, so we have revised line 115 accordingly.

10. LINES 131–38: Interesting. I was expecting that you’d bring up the fact that the externally contracted consultants are remunerated for their work. As such, part of the contractual element of such work might exclude the expectation of being acknowledged as playing a part in a research project. (In other words, in lieu of being named as a co-author or contributor, you are being paid for your services. Feasibly, a consultant could charge nothing yet be asked to be included as a co-author or contributor in return.) This point feels very important to me!

    We agree that it is an interesting point. According to the limited data reported at the METM18 meeting (https://www.metmeetings.org/en/programme:1071and references 37 and 38), there is no obvious correlation between being paid versus not being paid, being employed in-house versus being employed as an externally contracted professional, and requiring versus not requiring acknowledgment. Knowledge about professional practices remains very limited at present, and we hope our article will stimulate further research.  

    The option of remuneration in lieu of acknowledgment is one that was discussed at the METM18 meeting. Although the data are still very preliminary and limited, it was clear that some people who were employed in-house (with a permanent position and stable salary) did not feel it was appropriate to require public acknowledgment in addition to their regular salary. Some of these contributors were apparently unaware of current research journal guidelines that encourage or require acknowledgment by name of people who contribute to the writing, language or editing but who are not authors.

    “Feasibly, a consultant could charge nothing yet be asked to be included as a co-author or contributor in return.” Asking to be included as a co-author would violate the authorship rules used by most if not all reputable research journals. And people in our profession are mostly aware that this would not be an appropriate or acceptable practice. Asking to be included as a non-author contributor is usually handled by thanking the contributor in the Acknowledgments section. But as shown at the METM18 meeting, policies and practices vary widely across the sample of MET members who provided data for the survey (references 37 and 38).  

11. LINES 163–64: Do you mean translation services here? (I ask because the previous paragraph concerns contracted services.) I know plenty of scholars for whom English is not their first language who write their research papers in their native language and then translate them into English themselves before contracting someone to conduct what you’d refer to as either “substantive editing” or just “language editing.” (By the way, they’re undertaking these translations simply because they’re aiming to have their work published in English-language journals.)

    Thank you for flagging this. We used the word “translation” to contrast this type of text intervention with “editing” as the process dealt with in the previous paragraph. As you note, many researchers do their own into-English translation and then seek translation revision or manuscript editing support. But some still prefer translation, perhaps because it's more efficient for those who feel unable to produce an editable text in English if this is not their first language.

12. LINES 186–88: Very interesting! This issue is clearly being presented from the ESL perspective. Scholars for whom English is their native language—at least in the humanities—seem to have no qualms about acknowledging editorial support. In certain fields, in fact (religious studies, comparative literature), acknowledging referees’ comments and editorial suggestions used to be quite commonplace, particularly by younger scholars who wished to express their appreciation for the comments and attention of their seniors. (And I say “used to be” only because some younger scholars, in the U.S.A., at least, seem not to have been taught the politeness of such acknowledgements in recent years. Gender studies is perhaps an outlier of generosity, openness, and transparency: scholars in this field have seemingly become more willing to acknowledge assistance—in line with the very ethics of the field, of course.) Yes, interesting.

    Thank you for this comment. We agree it’s all extremely interesting.  

13. LINES 224–31: Please ensure that someone on the production side fixes the spacing within these justified lines (vis-à-vis the URLs).

    This is out of our hands. The journal requires manuscripts to have right-margin justification (which looks dreadful in lines that contain a URL or come right before or after a URL) and then exports manuscripts to pdf with no further styling. Articles with in-text URLs and right margin alignment inevitably have some ugly, stretched-out word spacings. Internet and digital media have almost killed good typesetting.

14. LINES 266–67: Oh! That’s a huge weakness of CRediT!

    Thank you. This is why we are concerned, and why we wrote this article. If CRediT becomes more widespread, the problem will only get worse and harder to fix as people increasingly assume it’s “an industry standard”.

15. LINES 298–99: Good point about translation—unless you’re referring to the translation of data required to carry out a research project. (I’ve carried out qualitative studies abroad and required short-answer written survey results to be translated. The translator I retained for that project was not involved in writing any portion of the resultant manuscript—but was certainly worthy of being acknowledged.)

    Thanks for the observation. We agree that translators should always be acknowledged – not only in research articles, but in any document related with any type of research, writing, reporting, or other type of communication.

16. LINE 310: The “pre- or post-publication stages” language just seems wrong. I think they meant “pre- or post-acceptance stages,” didn’t they? (But I understand you’re just quoting the definition put forth by CRediT.) Anyway, I’m glad you recommend removing that language in lines 359–60.

    Thanks for this supportive comment. We agree that the wording here is probably due to a writing and editing oversight, and that they most likely meant “pre- or post-acceptance stages”.

17. LINE 361: Perhaps you should set off the name of your new category with commas.

    Thanks for this suggestion. We have added commas to set off the name of our new category here.

18. UPON FURTHER REFLECTION: I didn’t realize this point while I was reading the article, but I suppose I expected more to be made of the issue of authors writing in English as a non-primary language: I would presume that the various levels of “authors’ editors” have, as clientele, larger numbers of non-native writers (in English). In my view, the consideration in the paragraph at lines 174–88 is a direct function of whether the author (from whatever discipline) is operating in her or his native language or a secondary language.

    Thank you for sharing this reflection. The information in lines 178-192 applies equally to native and non-native users of English. In fact, one of us (V.M.) is currently working with a large public research institution in the USA to help their staff identify needs in terms of research writing skills. The profession of authors’ editing actually began in the USA, as reported in (among other sources) reference 13 (Matarese, V. Editing Research: The Author Editing Approach to Providing Effective Support to Writers of Research Papers. Information Today: Medford, NJ, USA, 2016. ISBN 978-157387531-8).

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thanks to the comments from previous reviewers and the authors' efforts to be responsive to them, the manuscript is improved. I do have concerns about authors understanding of CRediT roles, authorship, and their suggestions. Authors’ response to some of the previously raised issue is not satisfactory. These issue are:

Major issue 1:

The term technical support is vague and authors are not making their case stronger by putting authors’ editors contributions in the same basket as technical support or contributions of statisticians. Statistical support falls under the role of Formal Analysis in CRediT, so trying to make a case for statisticians is rather superficial anyway. While authors mention many interesting facts about their own practice (especially in section 3) they provide no similar analysis for statisticians or those they define as technical support. This is a major issue that comes back in the next feedback as well.

Moreover, authors claim that supervisors determine who should receive any kind of credit. This is claimed by others too. One question remains unanswered though: are authors insinuating that it is supervisors that don’t want authors’ editors to be listed among contributors and other contributors are OK with it? If yes, (given their 50 years of experience) explaining why and what motivates supervisors to exclude authors editors could open up new research directions.

Major issue 3:

This is perhaps the biggest problem of this paper as it is a serious flaw. Authors suggest to revise the current Investigation role and add the new Technical support role for the CRediT taxonomy on the basis of no real analysis. Suggesting a new role for a taxonomy requires objective reasoning. Authors’ response reads “we feel it would not be helpful to elaborate further on this because we have to follow the usage in the CRediT system. We assume that “investigation” is a synonym for “research” in the CRediT category definitions.” In my understanding of professional writing, “we feel” and “we assume” do not sound objective.

Authors provide no explanation about the description they provide for the Technical support role. The description reads: “Experimental procedures, laboratory management, animal husbandry, instrumental expertise, statistical support, clinical support, graphic work, and other skilled activities done as a non-author named in the acknowledgments”. Nowhere in the text one can see any reasonable definition or meaningful description of “Experimental procedure”, “Laboratory management”, “Animal Husbandry”, “Instrumental expertise”, “Clinical Support”, “Graphic Work”, etc.; nor can one see the need to include these explicitly. What is the basis for including these tasks and excluding other tasks from this description?

Furthermore, what is the difference between these tasks and those that are mentioned under "Resources" in the original taxonomy?

This is simply inconsistent with the aim of authors for writing this paper. One cannot aim at improving a taxonomy that will be used by millions of articles, and be ignorant to descriptions and definitions. Once again, it is essential to keep the focus of the paper on the issue that authors are most aware of and/or issues that are well-described. Given authors’ experiences in authors’ editors role and what they describe in section 2 and 3, they can provide a meaningful analysis on this aspect but any other suggestion in this version is based on no real analysis.

Minor issue 12.

Authors are missing the point. The comment was not suggesting to add information about business practices or rate of pay, it was about the routine. In section 2, authors aim to analyse different forms of credit (e.g. authorship, acknowledgement) and therefore, describing the differences between a routine task and an intellectual task helps make their case stronger…

Minor issue 13.

It is essential that authors don’t make unsupported claims. As mentioned above investigation and technical support need to be explained in different sections or else, they should not be mentioned. What authors add in lines 111-114 is interesting but superficial for the most part as it provides no meaningful analysis.

Minor issue 15.

Once again, CRediT is not developed or used to indicate authorship. Its developers wrote in 2015 “these roles are not intended to define what constitutes authorship”… Any mention of the term author in suggestions makes these claims weaker and less relevant. People who are doing research in the field of authorship will immediately notice this handicap. Indeed, using the word author in the description of a role in a taxonomy that is developed to help science get rid of authorship’s complexities seems like a handicap. It is inconsistent with the aim of developing the taxonomy and defeats the purpose as it were. Hence, the use of the word "writing" in roles 13 and 14 of the original taxonomy.

Please note that I am not disputing that CRediT could be used as a more extensive authors list, but authors provide no data to prove this. Authors can make their case much stronger if they could provide quantitative data of non-authors that were listed as contributors. Should this be 0 or near 0, then they can claim that their analysis is objective. However, at the moment such data is missing in the paper and their claim does not hold.

One new issue:

Abstract:

Line 16-17: “Our assessment, however, shows that in practice”

Given authors reliance on their own experiences, and lack of providing real-life scenario, and in order to prevent superficial generalisations, this should change in such a way that it makes a reference to personal experiences. Something like “in our experience” would be much better.

Author Response

The manuscript has been revised after consultation with the three Guest Editors of this special issue, in light of the feedback provided by Reviewer 1. Thank you for your further guidance on how to strengthen our manuscript.