Contributor Record for Research in the Physical Sciences
It is important to keep a record of contributors to ensure they get proper recognition and to help know who to contact with any questions about the data. Information recorded should include contributor names and their affiliations at the time of contribution, their responsibilities, and when they were active in the project. Adding ORCID identifiers ensures that correct attributions can be given to each of the contributors. Keep this table updated as new contributors join the project.
This Contributor record makes use of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT). CRediT is a standardized framework used to define and acknowledge the specific roles and contributions of individuals in research projects. It includes 14 roles such as conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, software, supervision, validation, visualization, writing (original draft), and writing (review & editing). This taxonomy helps ensure transparency and proper credit for each contributor's work.
| CREDiT role | Description of role | Contributors name, ORCIDs, and institutions | Dates active within project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Conceptualization | Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims. | ||
| Data curation | Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later re-use. | ||
| Formal Analysis | Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesize study data. | ||
| Funding acquisition | Acquisition of the financial support for the project. | ||
| Investigation | Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection. | ||
| Methodology | Development or design of methodology; creation of models. | ||
| Project administration | Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution. | ||
| Software | Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components. | ||
| Resources | Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools. | ||
| Supervision | Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team. | ||
| Verification | Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs. | ||
| Visualisation | Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation. | ||
| Writing | Publication drafts, reviews, and editing. |
What to do next:
- Find out how to get help with research data management
- View an example data management plan for physical scientists
Related links:
- Learn about best practices for collaborative working in your research
- Get guidance on the FAIR principles and sharing your data
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Creator: Cerys Willoughby, Louise Saul
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Last modified date: 2025-03-25
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