Investigating the division of scientific labor using the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT)
Article [Version of Record]
Abstract(s)
Contributorship statements were introduced by scholarly journals in the late 1990s to provide
more details on the specific contributions made by authors to research papers. After more than a
decade of idiosyncratic taxonomies by journals, a partnership between medical journals and
standards organizations has led to the establishment, in 2015, of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy
(CRediT), which provides a standardized set of 14 research contributions. Using the data from
Public Library of Science (PLOS) journals over the 2017–2018 period (N = 30,054 papers), this
paper analyzes how research contributions are divided across research teams, focusing on the
association between division of labor and number of authors, and authors’ position and specific
contributions. It also assesses whether some contributions are more likely to be performed in
conjunction with others and examines how the new taxonomy provides greater insight into the
gendered nature of labor division. The paper concludes with a discussion of results with respect to
current issues in research evaluation, science policy, and responsible research practices.