The contributor roles for randomized controlled trials and the proposal for a novel CRediT-RCT
- PMID: 32042828
- PMCID: PMC6989869
- DOI: 10.21037/atm.2019.12.96
The contributor roles for randomized controlled trials and the proposal for a novel CRediT-RCT
Abstract
Background: The past decade has witnessed a rapid increase in the number of contributors per article, which has made explicitly defining the roles of each contributor even more challenging. The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) was developed to explicitly define author roles, but there is a lack of empirical data on how CRediT is used in clinical trials. This study aimed to provide empirical data on the use of CRediT in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and discuss some limitations of CRediT. A new taxonomy (CRediT-RCT) is proposed to explicitly define the author roles in RCTs.
Methods: The electronic database of PubMed was searched from July 2017 to October 2019 to identify component trials with a randomized controlled design. Publications from the Public Library of Science (PLoS) were included because they embed the CRediT roles within the authors' metadata rather than solely as a separate paragraph of text.
Results: A total of 446 articles involving 4,185 authors were included in the study. Most authors participated in the study's conceptualization (44.9%) and investigation (48.8%), but only a fraction of the authors participated in software management (7.4%). Many CRediT roles were correlated with each other: the strongest correlation was the one between funding acquisition and conceptualization (correlation metric =0.39), followed by the one between conceptualization and methodology (0.37). The authors who acquired funding (OR: 2.06; 95% CI: 1.54-2.76; P<0.001), did project administration (OR: 1.54; 95% CI: 1.17-2.03; P=0.002), performed supervision (OR: 2. 60; 95% CI: 1.93-3.52; P<0.001), wrote the original draft (OR: 4.83; 95% CI: 3.54-6.60; P<0.001), or were the first author (OR: 7.85; 95% CI: 5.71-10.87; P<0.001), were more likely to be the corresponding author. Also, while the original draft writing was significantly associated with the designation of the first author (OR: 37.49; 95% CI: 25.29-57.57; P<0.001), the first author did not perform review and editing (OR: 0.55; 95% CI: 0.40-0.75; P<0.001), supervision (OR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.36-0.67; P<0.001), or resource management (OR: 0.71; 95% CI: 0.50-1.00; P=0.053). We further propose a novel Contributor Roles Taxonomy for Randomized Controlled Trials (CRediT-RCT) which includes 10 roles.
Conclusions: The present study provides empirical data on the use of CRediT for RCTs, and some limitations of the taxonomy are discussed. We further propose a new CRediT-RCT which includes 10 roles.
Keywords: Contribution; authorship; contributor roles; randomized controlled trial; taxonomy.
2019 Annals of Translational Medicine. All rights reserved.
Conflict of interest statement
Conflicts of Interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Figures



Similar articles
-
'Author Contribution Details' and not 'Authorship Sequence' as a merit to determine credit: A need to relook at the current Indian practice.Natl Med J India. 2020 Jan-Feb;33(1):24-30. doi: 10.4103/0970-258X.308238. Natl Med J India. 2020. PMID: 33565483 Review.
-
Transparency in authors' contributions and responsibilities to promote integrity in scientific publication.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Mar 13;115(11):2557-2560. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1715374115. Epub 2018 Feb 27. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018. PMID: 29487213 Free PMC article.
-
Perceptions of authors' contributions are influenced by both byline order and designation of corresponding author.J Clin Epidemiol. 2014 Sep;67(9):1049-54. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2014.04.006. Epub 2014 Jun 26. J Clin Epidemiol. 2014. PMID: 24973824
-
CRediT for authors of articles published in the Journal of the Medical Library Association.J Med Libr Assoc. 2021 Jul 1;109(3):362-364. doi: 10.5195/jmla.2021.1294. J Med Libr Assoc. 2021. PMID: 34629963 Free PMC article.
-
Modernizing authorship criteria and transparency practices to facilitate open and equitable team science.Account Res. 2024 Oct 6:1-24. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2024.2405041. Online ahead of print. Account Res. 2024. PMID: 39369685 Review.
Cited by
-
A systematic scoping review of the ethics of Contributor Role Ontologies and Taxonomies.Account Res. 2024 Aug;31(6):678-705. doi: 10.1080/08989621.2022.2161049. Epub 2023 Jan 14. Account Res. 2024. PMID: 36641627 Free PMC article.
References
-
- Brand A, Allen L, Altman M, et al. Beyond authorship: attribution, contribution, collaboration, and credit. Learn Publ 2015;28:151-5. 10.1087/20150211 - DOI
LinkOut - more resources
Full Text Sources
Miscellaneous