Marjorie Hlava (speaker)

1. The Contributor Role
Taxonomy Project
Interim report
Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President
Access Innovations, Inc.

2. Contributor Role Taxonomy
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What is it?
How did it get here?
Who is involved?
Why do we need it?
What have we done?
Where can it be used?
Next steps

3. What is it?
A tool to improve recognition
and details on
all
contributor roles in a published work.

4. Why do we need it?
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More and more frequently, research and
scholarly publications involve collaboration.
There is a growing interest among
stakeholders in scholarship in increasing
the transparency of research and in
identifying the specific roles that
contributors play in creating collaborative
scholarly works.

5. Why do we need it?
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Provides a more precise and extensive
identification of all contributions to a paper
All roles recognized
Better credit given to supporting roles
Modeling to writing are all significant
Eventually … Publishers to pass author
name data to auto-populate the author
name fields

6. How did it get here?
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A workshop at Harvard
Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust
In autumn of 2011, discussed ways to
improve recognition and details on all
contributor roles in a published work.
Initial report:
http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/attribution_worksh
op/files/iwcsa_report_final_18sept12.pdf

7. Who is involved?
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Contributor Role
Taxonomy
Task Force Members
Liz Allen, Wellcome Trust
Micah Altman, Brown
Ginny Barbour, PLOS
Amy Brand, Harvard, Convenor
Marjorie Hlava, Access Innovations
Veronique Kiermer, Nature Publishing Group
Christine Laine, American College of Physicians
Diane Scott-Lichter, AACR / ACP

8. The word “author”
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Role of “author” is no longer clear
Not a single designation of the work done
Doesn’t represent the complexity involved
in the supporting roles of the community
in producing a published work
Offer a list of 11+ roles that contributors
can claim in the roles they play in the
publication of their work

9. The challenge
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Increasingly complex research communities
Conflicting funding contributions
Digital distribution mandate that we need to
find a way to identify the contributions of all
who participate in the process of bringing
research to fruition

10. Key challenges
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Keep the list to 10 – 12 terms
To make a taxonomy suitably generic but with
sufficient granularity to enable precision
To enable some degree of cross-disciplinary
applicability
To ensure we don’t introduce perverse
incentives
The funding information is not an author role
Covering all disciplines – when the approaches
are quite different

11. Like the movies – better
identification of who did what

12. Under construction

13. The work and result
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The task force empowered by the
workshop subsequently built a small
taxonomy for use in the categorization of
the actual contribution an "author" or
other contributor makes to the published
paper.

14. We all come into this with a slightly different perspective…..
Criteria important for Nature
Demand on taxonomy
Transparency
No 'honorary authorship'*
Contribution must justify authorship
Accountability
All authors have responsibilities
Corresponding authors have more
responsibilities (overall integrity, persistence,
data/material sharing)
Authors responsible for specialized experiments
or analysis have some responsibilities
Contribution must justify authorship
Degree of contribution is important (at
least 'corresponding' versus 'contributing')
Desire to provide appropriate credit, although
we are resisting demands for convoluted cocontributions ("7 co-first and 6 co-second
authors")
* Simple co-contribution is often
demanded
* Degree of contribution is important (lead
role versus contributor role? or intellectual
innovation versus operation?)
* Recognition of important expertise that
does not typically justify 'first author' level
Desire to allow microattributions
* Allow association to part of the paper
(fig), object (data, resource, protocol), field
specific expertise
Corresponding author filling in on behalf of
authors if captured as metadata; or inferred
from existing statements.
Contribution must be self explanatory to
reader in addition to be a standard
Credit
Ease of use
Nature
Allow association with parts of the paper
(data, figure)
*We already have a definition of authorship, by which we consider 'author' not necessarily = 'writer'
(may be different problem for clinical journals). According to this definition, 'obtaining funding' or
'writing' only would not justify authorship.

15. Taxonomy creation
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Mining the literature
Contributions from the team
Review of other models
Draft taxonomy
Team vetting
Validation by publishers

16. Mining the literature
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JATS Contributor element – 800,000 AIP
articles in JATS format
10 years of MEDLINE for the underlying
research acknowledgements
Micah Altman mined through the
acknowledgments in the Elsevier data
David Shotton’s SCoRO model:
http://www.essepuntato.it/lode/http://purl.o
rg/spar/scoro

17. Term sources and
team vetting
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Several iterations of the taxonomy
Nature
STEM – DTIC
IEEE
SCoRO
PLOS
Microattribution Survey
IWCSA Report

18. Methodology
Study conception
Methodology development
Methodology design
Patient study clinical trials
Data
Data contribution
Data gathering
Data recording
Data analysis
Data curation
Metadata
Data analysis
Data interpretation
Data notation
Mathematical modeling
Statistical analysis
Model design
Engineering
Software programming
Equipment calibration
Equipment design
Equipment management
Report preparation
Initial draft preparation
Critical review
Manuscript contribution
Manuscript revision
Final approval
Illustration
Data visualization
Administration
Funding
Research supervision
Project management
Version 1

19. SUMMARY OF ROLES
1.
Study Conception (Conceptual)
a. Designed concept of study
b. Formulated research questions
c. Developed analytical approach
d. Guidance, input, and advice??? – May be covered if degrees of contribution
are applied.
2. Methodology
a. Development or design of the methodology;
b. Methodological, technology and equipment design;
c. Creation of models both physical and theoretical;
3. Formal Analysis
a. Investigation Performance of the experiments
b. Data evidence collection
4. Investigation
a. Performance of the experiments
b. Data evidence collection
5. Provision of Resources and Tools
6. Data Curation and Management
7. Manuscript Preparation
a. Writing the initial draft
b. Critical review, commentary or revision
c. Illustration and visualization
8. Programming and Computation
9. Project Administration
10. Funding acquisition
11. Supervision
a. Principal investigator (possible)
Version 2

20. Conceptual
framework
VersionConceived and designed the experiments
2
Conceptual design of the study
Contributing to writing and
revision of manuscript
Contributed equally
Contributed to manuscript
Development of the methodological design of the
study
Final approval
Revised manuscript
Methodology
Machine/equipment calibration
Illustration/visualization
Methodological design
Prepared graphs
Prepared illustrations or
graphical displays to
accompany text
Prepared tables
Version 3
Technology/equipment design
Development methodology
Equipment management
Programming/software
Statistical analysis
Analytic programming
Developed statistical or mathematical techniques
to analyze study data
Developed software
Project
management/administration
Research and
investigation
Jointly supervised the
research
Laboratory head
Executed, organized and
archived of study-related
documents
Project management
Research management
Organization/supervision of
study staff
Contributed reagents, materials or analysis tools
Performed the experiments
Data collection
Assembled study samples or population
Developed tools, laboratory procedures, or
techniques for data collection
Gathered and recorded data
Funding acquisition
Commercial partner

21. Conceptual framework
Drafting manuscript
Conceived and designed the
experiments
Conceptual design of the study
Prepared initial draft
Wrote the manuscript
Contributing to writing and
revision of manuscript
Methodology
Machine/equipment calibration
Methodological design
Technology/equipment design
Development methodology
Critical review
Contributed to manuscript
Final approval
Revised manuscript
Contributed comments and
suggestions on drafts of the
manuscript
Performed critical revision of
manuscript
Version 4
Equipment management
Statistical analysis
Illustration/visualization
Developed statistical or mathematical
techniques to analyze study data
Prepared graphs
Prepared illustrations or graphical
displays to accompany text
Research and
investigation
Prepared tables
Instrumentation
Contributed reagents, materials or
analysis tools
Performed the experiments
Cared for patients
Clinically characterized patients
Programming/software
Project
management/administration
Ensured patient follow up
Performed phenotyping
Performed genotyping and association
analyses
Analytic programming
Developed software
Jointly supervised the research
Laboratory head
Executed, organized and archived of

22. Conceptual
framework
Version 4 and designed the experiments
Conceived
Contributing to writing and
revision of manuscript
Critical review
Contributed to manuscript
Final approval
Revised manuscript
Contributed comments and suggestions
on drafts of the manuscript
Performed critical revision of manuscript
Article guarantor
Prepares supplementary information
Publishes data
Direct oversight and management for the
manuscript
Conceptual design of the study
Formulates research questions
Development of analytical approach
Methodology
Machine/equipment calibration
Methodological design
Technology/equipment design
Development methodology
Equipment management
Undertakes modelling
Tested equipment
Version 5
Illustration/visualization
Prepared graphs
Prepared illustrations or graphical
displays to accompany text
Prepared tables
Specimen preparation and treatment
Statistical
analysis
Photographer
Developed statistical or mathematical
techniques to analyze study data
Statistical assistance
Performed imaging
Programming/software
Research and
investigation
Analytic programming
Developed software
Designing computer code / algorithms
Programming computer code / algorithms
Maintains research facility
Processes data
Provides technical support
Responsibility for day-to-day execution of
experiment
Responsible for the overall research
findings
Tooling
Creating computer-based workflows
Managed software development
Project

23. Version 6

24. Version 7

25. Version 8

26. 
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Study conception
Ideas, formulation of research question, and statement of hypothesis.
Designed concept of study
Formulated research questions
Developed analytical approach
Guidance, input, and advice??? – May be covered if degrees of contribution are applied.
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Methodology
Development and design of methodology
This role includes activities such as
Development of the methodology;
Methodological, technology and equipment design;
Creation of models both physical and theoretical;
Version 9
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Formal Analysis
This role includes the application of statistical, mathematical and other models and techniques to analyze study data.
(provided statistical assistance) – May be covered if degrees of contribution are applied
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Investigation
This role covers the activities included in the carrying out of the research and investigation process
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Performance of the experiments
Data evidence collection
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NOTE: . The activities are different in Medical, DNA, Physics, Biology etc however the roles level remains the same. In a
medical setting it includes patient care, clinical characterization of patients, ensuring patient followup. In DNA and Genome
research it would include phenotyping, genotyping and the associated analysis. In DNA and Genome research it would include
phenotyping, genotyping and the associated analysis.

27. Provision of Resources and Tools
This role includes contribution of reagents, material instrumentation or other analysis tools
Data Curation and Management
Management activities to curate and maintain research data and metadata for use and reuse
Manuscript Preparation
Any contribution to the creation of the published work.
Writing the initial draft
Critical review and comment
Illustration/visualization
This role includes those who prepared the illustrations and other graphical displays to accompany the text.
They include photographers, the preparation of the tables and graphs, the imaging, visualization of the data in
supplemental data.
Programming and Computation
This role includes the analytic programming, software development, designing programming and
implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms, creation of computer based workflows, and
management of the software development.
Project Administration
This role includes the coordination or management of research activities leading to the publication. This is
specifically the project management which led to the execution of this published work.
Version 10
Funding acquisition
This role includes those responsible for the acquisition of the financial support of the project through grant or
other funding of the project. It includes the commercial partner, organizational partner, leader applicant, coapplicant, and non academic partners.
Supervision
This role is responsible for the overall integrity and accuracy of the research findings, the published material
and insurance of regulatory compliance. it includes the Principal Investigator, corresponding author*, and
other lead stakeholders. (NOTE: Thorny issue: All members of the team should be accountable for the work.)
Could we fold this role up under “administration”?

28. Current taxonomy
DRAFT – Version 11
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--Study conception
--Methodology
Formal analysis
Computation
Investigation
Resources
Data curation
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Publication
---Supervision
--Project
administration
Funding acquisition
Other roles

29. Taxonomy details 1/7
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--Study conception
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Scope: Ideas; formulation of research
question; statement of hypothesis
--Methodology
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Scope: Development or design of
methodology; creation of models

30. Taxonomy details 2/7
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Formal analysis
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Computation
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Scope: Application of statistical, mathematical, or
other formal techniques to analyze study data
Scope: Programming, software development;
designing computer programs; implementation of
the computer code and supporting algorithms

31. Taxonomy details 3/7
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Investigation
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Scope: Conducting the research and
investigation process
Sub-role: Performed the experiments
Sub-role: Data/evidence collection
Other investigatory role: please specify in
space provided

32. Taxonomy details 4/7
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Resources
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Scope: Provision of study materials,
reagents, materials, patients, laboratory
samples, animals, instrumentation, or other
analysis tools.
Data curation
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Scope: Management activities to annotate
(produce metadata) and maintain research
data for initial use and later re-use.

33. Taxonomy details 5/7
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Publication
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---
Scope: Preparation, creation, and/or presentation
of the published work.
Sub-role: Writing the initial draft
Sub-role: Critical review, commentary or revision
Sub-role: Visualization/data presentation
Other presentational role: please specify in the
space provided

34. Taxonomy details 6/7
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Supervision
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Scope: Responsibility for supervising
research; project orchestration; principal
investigator; other lead stakeholder.
--Project administration
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Scope: Coordination or management of
research activities leading to this publication.

35. Taxonomy details 7/7
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Funding acquisition
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Scope: Acquisition of the financial support of
the project through grant or other funding of
the project
Other roles

36. Taxonomy validation
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To validate the initial taxonomy
25 publishers invited
Each participating publisher identified 50
or more articles with corresponding
authors (of multi-authored works with
between 2 and 15 authors) and
completed a survey

38. The “Corresponding Author”
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In physics, medical, and biological
sciences, it is very important that each of
the authors be allowed to state his or her
own level of contribution.
Worry about disagreements when only
one author fills in for people’s contribution
types and levels.

39. The publisher data
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Returned spreadsheets
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Included relevant author names
Included journal information
Corresponding authors and participating
authors submitted their information using a
spreadsheet template.

40. Pilot project returns
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Nature
ACPOnline
PLOS
Elsevier
elifesciences.org
AAAS
The IET (Inspec)

41. Other participants
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American Society for Civil Engineers –
ASCE
Cambridge Press
IEEE
NISO
Institute of Physics – IOP
American Chemical Society – ACS
SPIE

42. Next steps?
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Initial receipt of survey results is in
Analyze results
Modify taxonomy
Report results at CSE in May
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Council of Science Editors

43. Next steps
– more validation
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Broader feedback
Greater variety of constituents
Verify with relevant works to see if the
test contributor role assignments accord
with their perceptions of their own
contributions.
Request input from the library
community.

44. Still in research
and development
stage, so use
options are only
conjecture

45. Draft principles of use:
This work is designed to be used with publisher "author"
submission systems as well as internal editorial production
systems. It may be used as a brief authority file, pick list, or
drop down menu in those systems. In order to encourage
use and participation, we have made the roles general and
the number limited so that they can be used in a drop down
menu or pick list within paper submission modules.
Contributors may also elect to tag themselves within the
author block of a paper.

46. Draft principles of use:
We found that contributors and publishers come from many
different perspectives and cultures of use. Clinical fields
currently present attributions differently than physics, or the
humanities. The current author assignment protocols are
different within the fields of medicine, genetics, physics,
biology etc.; however, the roles level remains the same. In
a medical setting it includes patient care, clinical
characterization of patients, ensuring patient follow-up. In
genetics and genome research it would include
phenotyping, genotyping and the associated analysis.

47. Draft principles of use:
Contributions must be self-explanatory to the reader and
follow a standard attribution path to be understood globally.
Use of this list should be based on level of contribution to
encourage transparency.
The contributorship designation should reflect the
responsibilities of the individual claiming each role. For
example, corresponding author responsibilities include the
overall integrity of the paper, and ensuring that the data
and appropriate materials are shared.
Some contributors are responsible for the specialized
experiments and others for extensive analysis.

48. Draft principles of use:
The degree of the contribution is also important; for example, to
distinguish between an intellectual innovation and an
operational role.
The expertise offered to the project and paper may not justify a
first position on the paper.
Obtaining the funding, or leading the lab where the research is
done, may not justify contributorship positions.
As the taxonomy is meant to be considered a standard,
contributors to published works should be assigned one or more
role descriptors as they appear in the taxonomy.
Taking into account the scope of each descriptor, most
contributors’ roles will be covered in the taxonomy. If a role is
not available, contributors should contact the creators of the
taxonomy so they can consider changing or expanding the
taxonomy to reflect this role.

49. Draft principles of use:
For each contributor of the work in question, please
indicate applicable roles, and use free text fields to
supply additional role information where relevant.
 Choose the most appropriate taxonomy term for
your contribution(s).
 More than one taxonomy term per person may
be used.
 Please use standard phrasing of each taxonomy
term.

50. Draft principles of use:
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For each role please indicate degree of
contribution, if appropriate.
Below the terms are stated first as a
"Scope" in several cases with sub roles
and secondly as a possible "Scope note"
statement
__ Lead
__ Supporting
__ All contributors equal

51. Editorial Workflow Integration
Contributor Role Tagging
A popup list of contributor role options appears for the author to
choose from
----Study conception ?
Contributor Information
Contributor Role
--Methodology ?
Mouse Over for explanation
Formal analysis ?
Computation ?
Investigation ?
Application of
Resources ?
statistical,
Data Curation ?
mathematical or
Publication ?
other formal
---Supervision ?
techniques to
--Project administration ?
Funding acquisition ? analyze study data
Formal Analysis

52. Current ORCID taxonomy

53. Contributor Roles as
listed on the ORCID Site

54. Possible ORCID taxonomy
What was your role?
Study conception
--Methodology
Formal analysis
Computation
Investigation
Resources
Data curation
Publication
---Supervision
--Project administration
Funding acquisition
Other roles
Proposed
Contributor Roles taxonomy
ORCID Site

55. Potential taxonomy
additions
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Translators
Commentors or Discussors - Authors who discuss
another person's work or find errors in another work.
This could be widened to cover the reviewers of
books, software, etc. unless they are considered as
curators (?) or investigators (?).
Editors and Guest Editors - They may have a hand in
the selection of articles for inclusion in various special
issues/sections, or even select conference papers for
further development and publication in a periodical.

56. Potential taxonomy
deletions
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Fundraising – should this be part of the
contributor role or placed in another area?
Will “Other roles” be allowed by NISO?

57. A possible map to JATS
<collab>: Group of contributors credited under a single name; includes an organization credited
as a contributor. REMARKS: This element may contain either a collaboration of individuals or the
name of an organization (such as a laboratory, educational institution, corporation, or department)
when such a unit acts as a contributor by, for example, authoring the work.
<contrib>: Container element for information about a single author, editor, or other contributor.
REMARKS: Types of Contributors. The element <contrib> can be used for many roles besides
authors, for example, editors, special issue editors, photographers, illustrators, directors, etc. The
@contrib-type attribute placed on the <contrib> element, or the <role> element used within the
<contrib> element, may be used to describe the contribution.
<contrib-group>: Container element for one or more contributors and information about those
contributors. REMARKS: Inside the element <article-meta>, the <contrib-group> element groups
individual contributors to a document such as authors, researchers, or photographers. Inside the
element <journal-id>, the <contrib-group> element groups contributors to the whole journal, above
the level of an article, such as section editors or journal editors, or special issue editors.

58. As part of the <contrib> element
<role>: Title or role of a contributor to a work (for example, editor-in-chief, chief scientist,
photographer, research associate). REMARKS: Information on the role or type of contribution is
collected in two places, in the @contrib-type attribute on the <contrib> element and in the <role>
element (which is part of the contributor information inside a<contrib> element). For example, the
<contrib> element’s @contrib-type attribute might have a value of “editor”, whereas the content of
the <role> element could be “Associate Editor”. As another example, the <contrib> element’s
@contrib-type attribute might be “author”, and the <role> element might contain “Principal
Author”.
<principal-investigator>: Individual(s) responsible for the intellectual content of the work reported
in the document.
<principal-award-recipient>: Individual(s) or institution(s) to whom the award was given (for
example, the principal grant holder or the sponsored individual).

59. <contrib-id>:
<contrib-id>: One identifier for a person such as a
contributor or principal investigator. This element will hold:
 an ORCID,
 a trusted publisher’s identifier,
 a JST (Japanese Science and Technology Agency)
identifier,
 or an NII (National Individual Identifier).
 ISNI – International Standard Name Identifier
The <contrib-id> tag is the only one that seems to
reference controlled vocabularies – map to the ORCID,
JST, NII

60. Possibilities
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Encourage widespread adoption
Add to JATS – DTD
Add to ORCID
Make into an ISO / BSI / NISO Standard

61. Survey results
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Early peek
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How easy or difficult did you find it to assign
the contributions …
…do you agree or disagree that the
taxonomy is comprehensive…
How does this structured list compare …in
terms of accuracy of contributions?
Easy? Agree? Similar? Well over 80%

62. Still in research mode
FULL Results to be
reported at
Council of Science Editors
in May

63. Discussion?
Marjorie M.K. Hlava
President and Chairman
Access Innovations, Inc.
Data Harmony
www.dataharmony.com
www.accessinn.com
505-998-0800 ext 109
mhlava@accessinn.com
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