23 April 2020
Following its December 2019 announcement, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has announced the formal launch of its work to formalise and develop the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) as an ANSI/NISO standard. NISO Voting Members expressed strong support for this work, which has also been welcomed by the wider community.
Work will focus first on formalising the 14 contributor roles in the existing CRediT taxonomy, through a small working group led by the current CRediT Chairs, Liz Allen of F1000Research, Simon Kerridge, of the University of Kent, and Alison McGonagle-O’Connell of O’Connell Consulting. Once the working group’s proposed CRediT standard has completed the ANSI/NISO approval process, a NISO CRediT standing committee will be set up. This will provide a forum for discussion and community feedback, support further implementations and use cases for CRediT, and — most importantly — look forward and consider how CRediT can be developed and potentially expanded, for example to reflect a wider range of contributions to research and to support disciplinary (beyond its initial STM focus) and subject areas.
Calls for feedback on the initial CRediT standard, and for participation in the standing committee, will be issued later this year.