# CRediT Authorship Guide

Used by `intake_agent`, `formatter_agent`, and `draft_writer_agent`.

## Overview

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a standardized taxonomy of author contributions, co-developed by CASRAI and NISO in 2015. It has now been adopted by over 50 major publishers (Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley, Taylor & Francis, PLOS, etc.). CRediT defines 14 contribution roles; each author may be assigned one or more roles, and each role may be undertaken by one or more authors.

---

## CRediT 14 Contribution Roles

### 1. Conceptualization

**Definition**: Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Proposing the research concept of "the impact of declining birthrate on private university management strategies"
- Establishing the research question: examining the impact pathways of the HEEACT accreditation system on teaching quality
- Designing the research framework: applying BSC (Balanced Scorecard) to university self-assessment

### 2. Data Curation

**Definition**: 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.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Organizing MOE (Ministry of Education) public statistics and building a cross-year comparative database
- Cleaning UCAN competency diagnostic raw data, handling missing values and outliers
- Building an institutional metadata mapping table (including name changes and merger records)

### 3. Formal Analysis

**Definition**: Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Performing Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to analyze the relationship between accreditation indicators and student learning outcomes
- Conducting Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to evaluate university operational efficiency
- Using text mining techniques to analyze self-assessment report texts

### 4. Funding Acquisition

**Definition**: Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Applying for NSTC (National Science and Technology Council) research grants
- Obtaining MOE Higher Education Sprout Project funding
- Securing seed project funding from the institutional Office of Research and Development

### 5. Investigation

**Definition**: Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Conducting a survey: surveying faculty across all higher education institutions on the current state of teaching practice research
- Conducting in-depth interviews: interviewing quality assurance directors at 10 universities
- Collecting self-assessment reports and site visit records from various institutions

### 6. Methodology

**Definition**: Development or design of methodology; creation of models.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Designing a mixed-methods research framework (quantitative survey + qualitative interviews)
- Developing a higher education quality indicator assessment tool
- Constructing an indicator system for a university exit early-warning model

### 7. Project Administration

**Definition**: Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Coordinating the work progress of a cross-institutional research team
- Managing phased outputs of a multi-year NSTC grant
- Arranging accreditation site visit schedules and committee member assignments

### 8. Resources

**Definition**: Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Providing access to an Institutional Research (IR) database
- Providing authorization to use HEEACT accreditation data
- Providing high-performance computing resources for large-scale text analysis

### 9. Software

**Definition**: Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Developing an automated accreditation indicator calculation dashboard
- Writing Python/R statistical analysis code
- Building an NLP text analysis system

### 10. Supervision

**Definition**: Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Supervising graduate students in conducting thesis research
- Serving as principal investigator and monitoring research quality
- Providing methodological guidance as a senior scholar

### 11. Validation

**Definition**: Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Verifying the robustness of quantitative analysis results (sensitivity analysis)
- Using triangulation to confirm qualitative research findings
- Cross-checking the consistency of different data sources

### 12. Visualization

**Definition**: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Creating accreditation indicator trend charts and dashboards
- Designing research framework diagrams and conceptual model diagrams
- Creating charts and heatmaps for statistical analysis results

### 13. Writing -- Original Draft

**Definition**: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Writing the complete initial draft of the paper (including all chapters)
- Translating the Chinese initial draft into an English submission version
- Writing specific chapters (e.g., literature review or methodology)

### 14. Writing -- Review & Editing

**Definition**: Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision — including pre- or post-publication stages.

**Higher Education Research Context Examples**:
- Reviewing and revising co-authors' initial drafts
- Making revisions based on peer review comments
- Proofreading the final version for text and formatting

---

## ICMJE Authorship Criteria

The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria are widely referenced across all academic disciplines. **All four conditions must be met** to be listed as an author:

| # | Condition | Description |
|---|------|------|
| 1 | Substantial contributions | Substantial contributions to the conception or design; or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data |
| 2 | Drafting or revising | Participation in drafting the manuscript or critically reviewing important intellectual content |
| 3 | Final approval | Approval of the final version for submission |
| 4 | Accountability | Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work, ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part are appropriately investigated and resolved |

### Contributions That Do Not Qualify for Authorship

The following contributions typically **do not qualify** for authorship and should be listed in the Acknowledgments:

- Providing funding support only
- Providing administrative support or resources only
- Language editing or translation only
- Data entry or transcription only
- Serving as a department head only (without actual research involvement)

---

## Contribution Matrix Example

### Author x Role Matrix

| Role | Author A (Corresponding Author) | Author B | Author C |
|------|:---:|:---:|:---:|
| Conceptualization | Lead | Supporting | -- |
| Data curation | -- | Lead | Supporting |
| Formal analysis | Supporting | Lead | -- |
| Funding acquisition | Lead | -- | -- |
| Investigation | Supporting | Lead | Lead |
| Methodology | Lead | Supporting | -- |
| Project administration | Lead | -- | -- |
| Resources | Lead | -- | -- |
| Software | -- | Lead | -- |
| Supervision | Lead | -- | -- |
| Validation | Supporting | Supporting | Lead |
| Visualization | -- | Lead | Supporting |
| Writing -- original draft | Lead | Supporting | -- |
| Writing -- review & editing | Lead | Supporting | Supporting |

**Label Descriptions**:
- **Lead**: Primarily responsible for this contribution
- **Supporting**: Assisting or auxiliary role
- **--**: Did not participate

---

## AI Not Listed as Author Policy

### Major Publisher and Organization Positions

| Organization/Publisher | Policy Summary | Effective Date |
|------------|---------|---------|
| **ICMJE** | AI tools do not meet the four authorship criteria (cannot be accountable, cannot approve); must not be listed as authors | 2023 |
| **APA** (American Psychological Association) | AI not listed as author; AI use must be disclosed in methods or acknowledgments | 2023 |
| **Nature/Springer Nature** | LLMs not listed as authors; must disclose usage in methods or acknowledgments | 2023 |
| **Science/AAAS** | AI-generated text cannot be presented as original work; AI use must be disclosed | 2023 |
| **Elsevier** | AI tools not listed as authors; must disclose in the manuscript | 2023 |
| **Wiley** | AI not listed as author; must describe usage in acknowledgments | 2023 |
| **Taylor & Francis** | AI not listed as author; must disclose AI use at submission | 2023 |
| **IEEE** | AI must not be listed as author or co-author | 2023 |

### AI Disclosure Best Practices

1. **Clearly state in Methods or Acknowledgments** which AI tools were used and how they were used
2. **Authors take full responsibility** for all AI-assisted output content
3. **AI-produced text must not be directly presented as original research findings**
4. **Recommended format for citing AI tools** (per APA 7th):

```
OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (Version GPT-4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com/
```

---

## CRediT Requirements Across Major Journals

| Journal/Publisher | CRediT Requirement | Format |
|------------|------------|------|
| Most **Elsevier** journals | Mandatory | Select roles in submission system |
| **PLOS ONE** | Mandatory | Stated in text within the manuscript |
| Some **Springer Nature** journals | Encouraged | Stated in text within the manuscript |
| Some **Wiley** journals | Encouraged | Text or table within the manuscript |
| All **MDPI** journals | Mandatory | Dedicated section at end of manuscript |
| Some **Taylor & Francis** journals | Encouraged | Stated in text within the manuscript |
| **TSSCI** Taiwan journals | Few require it | Per individual journal regulations |

---

## Boundary Between Acknowledgments and Authorship

| List as Author | List in Acknowledgments |
|---------|---------|
| Designed the research framework | Provided administrative support |
| Wrote or substantially revised the manuscript | Language editing/translation |
| Performed data analysis | Data entry/transcription |
| Obtained research funding AND participated in research | Provided funding only without research involvement |
| Designed the research methodology | Provided laboratory/equipment |
| Supervised research and provided academic guidance | Served as administrative head only |

### Acknowledgments Section Example

```
The authors would like to thank [Name] from [Institution] for administrative
support, [Name] for language editing, and the anonymous reviewers for their
constructive feedback. This study was conducted with the support of the
Higher Education Evaluation and Accreditation Council of Taiwan (HEEACT).
```

---

## CRediT Statement Templates

### English Version

**Author Contributions Statement**:

```
[Author A]: Conceptualization, Methodology, Funding acquisition,
Writing – original draft, Supervision, Project administration.
[Author B]: Data curation, Formal analysis, Software, Visualization,
Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
[Author C]: Investigation, Validation, Writing – review & editing.
```

### Chinese Version

**Author Contributions Statement**:

```
[Author A]: Conceptualization, Methodology, Funding acquisition,
Writing – original draft, Supervision, Project administration.
[Author B]: Data curation, Formal analysis, Software, Visualization,
Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing.
[Author C]: Investigation, Validation, Writing – review & editing.
```

### Chinese-English Role Mapping

| English | Romanized Chinese |
|------|------|
| Conceptualization | Gai Nian Hua |
| Data curation | Zi Liao Guan Li |
| Formal analysis | Zheng Shi Fen Xi |
| Funding acquisition | Jing Fei Qu De |
| Investigation | Diao Cha Yan Jiu |
| Methodology | Yan Jiu Fang Fa |
| Project administration | Ji Hua Guan Li |
| Resources | Zi Yuan Ti Gong |
| Software | Ruan Ti Kai Fa |
| Supervision | Zhi Dao Jian Du |
| Validation | Yan Zheng |
| Visualization | Shi Jue Hua |
| Writing -- original draft | Zhuan Xie Chu Gao |
| Writing -- review & editing | Shen Yue Xiu Ding |

---

## Reference Resources

- CRediT official taxonomy: https://credit.niso.org/
- ICMJE authorship criteria: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html
- APA AI policy: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/resources/ai-policy
- Nature AI policy: https://www.nature.com/nature-portfolio/editorial-policies/ai
