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Jeremy Berg         jberg@aaas.org

Editor-in-Chief       Science Journals

March 2, 2018

透明的作者贡献度

2018年3月2日 《科学》社论

Authorship on papers is one of the major currencies of the scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, the contributions of different authors to a given paper have remained relatively opaque. Contributions are generally inferred from the order of authors, and implications of position on the authorship list vary between different investigators and scientific fields. A year ago, a group of editors and publishers across a wide range of disciplines met to discuss how to provide a more systemic solution to make author contributions more transparent. This week, their recommendations have been released (www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1715374115), and I applaud this effort and urge the wide adoption of this system.

论文署名是科学事业的主要通货（major currencies——默顿的提法）之一。然而，不同作者对特定论文的贡献度仍相对不透明。作者贡献度通常由作者排名来推断，（但）作者排名位置的具体含意在不同研究者和不同科学领域间存在差异。一年前（2017年），来自众多学科领域的齐聚一堂，讨论如何使作者贡献度更透明的系统解决方案。本周（2018年2月26日至3月2日），他们（讨论编辑和出版人后）的推荐已在以下网址www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1715374115发布，我赞赏这一组织活动，并督促（出版物）广泛采用（所推荐的作者贡献度分类）体系。

More explicit articulation of author contributions can be tremendously beneficial. Earlier in my career, I served on numerous academic promotion committees and, in a few case, faculty members took it upon themselves to thoughtfully annotate, their publication lists, clarifying their roles in individual publications. This allowed the committees to distinguish between those papers for which the faculty member had made major contributions from those involving a lower level of effort. Such distinctions simply were not apparent from the author lists alone. One of the core recommendations involves use of the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) system to categorize the efforts of different authors to a paper (docs.casral.org/CRediT). This system has 14 categories, including:

（在学术成果中）更清晰地表明作者贡献度将大有裨益。我在学术生涯的早期曾供职于许多学术评审委员会，鲜见教职人员自己承担为出版物清单添加经过深思熟虑的注释的工作，清晰说明在其中的角色。（这样的注释说明）使学术委员能将教员们做出主要贡献的论文与其努力程度更低的论文区分开来。而单靠作者排名来区分是不明确的。（编辑和出版人委员会）核心推荐（的方法）之一是需要使用“作者贡献角色分类法（CRediT）体系” (docs.casral.org/CRediT)将不同作者对某篇论文的工作进行分类。该体系（将作者角色）划分为14类，包括：

1. Conceptualization—Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.

概念化——提出想法；制定或逐步形成总体的研究目标和目的。

2. 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.

数据处理——数据管理，如注释（生成元数据）、数据清洗、为了初次使用及今后再次使用而进行的研究数据维护（包括解读数据本身所必需的软件代码）。

3. Formal analysis—Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.

正规分析——应用统计学、数学、数值或其他正规技术来分析或综合研究数据。

4. Funding acquisition—Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

获取资助——获得出版物所属项目的资金支持。

5. Investigation—Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.

调查——开展研究和调查过程，特指进行实验或数据/证据的采集。

6. Methodology—Development or design of methodology; creation of models.

方法论——开发或设计科学方法；创建模型。

7. Project administration—Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.

项目管理——负责管理、协调研究活动的规划与执行。

8. Resources—Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.

资源——提供研究资料、试剂、材料、作为试验对象的病患、实验室样本、实验动物、仪器、计算资源或其他分析工具。

9. Software—Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.

软件——编程、软件开发；设计计算机程序；执行计算机代码和支撑算法；测试已有代码组件。

10. Supervision—Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.

督导——监督、领导研究活动的规划与执行，包括对核心团队之外的指导。

11. Validation—Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.

验证——检验结果/实验和其他研究产出的整体可重复性/可再现性，无论是作为科研活动的一部分或单独的活动。

12. Visualization—Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/data presentation.

可视化——准备、创作和/或演示所出版的工作，特指可视化/数据演示。

13. Writing (original draft)—Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).

写作（初稿）——准备、创作和/或呈现所出版的工作，特指撰写初稿（包括本质的解释说明）。

14. Writing (review & editing)—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.

写作（审读和编校）——准备、创作和/或呈现原研究小组人员所发表的工作，特指批判性审读、评论或修改（包括发表前或发表后的阶段）。

Each author’s efforts can be assigned to one or more of these categories. Many other divisions are certainly possible, but these 14 were derived from practices across a wide range of scientific disciplines. The use of a standardized set of categories can enable human- and machine-readable reporting of these contributions across journals.

每位作者的工作均可归为上述某一种或多种类别。当然也可以（使用）许多其他的分类（方法），但上述14种分类来自于涵盖广泛科学学科（领域）的实践（总结）。使用标准化的分类体系能够实现跨期刊的人和机器可读的作者贡献度报告。

Note that CRediT categories are intended to describe author contributions, not to define what constitutes an appropriate contribution to warrant authorship. The group recommended best practices for authorship rules, and we have aligned our editorial policies (www.sciencemag.org/authors/science-journals-editorial-policies) with these recommendations, including the requirement that any author must have made a substantial contribution to the conception or completion of the underlying research, approve the final version of the manuscript, and agree to be accountable for the integrity of his or her contributions and for the overall manuscript. The importance of such rules is to provide a framework for research teams to establish authorship and to avoid the inclusion of inappropriate authors. The committee also makes suggestions for the responsibilities of the corresponding authors of papers. Designation as a corresponding author generally recognizes the individual(s) who played a leading role in the research. As such, this role comes with considerable responsibility when publishing the research, which is articulated in the Science Family’s editorial policies.

注意，CRediT分类旨在描述作者贡献度，而非定义什么是应被署名的恰当作者贡献。编辑和出版人委员会推荐了作者署名规则最佳范例，我们已据此修订了《科学》杂志的编辑政策（www.sciencemag.org/authors/science-journals-aditorial-policies），包括要求任何作者必须在底层研究的构思或完成过程中做出实质性贡献，认可稿件的最终版本，同意对其贡献的真实完整性负责，并对总体稿件负责。建立这些规则的重要性在于，为研究团队在成果署名时提供了参考框架，避免包含不恰当的作者（署名）。委员会还对论文通信作者应承担的责任提出了建议。被指定为通信作者通常是对科学家个人的褒奖，表彰他们在研究中扮演的领导角色。正因如此，当研究发表时，伴随这一领导角色的是相当大的责任，《科学》杂志在编辑政策中已有明确表述。

The group also recommended the use of standard individual identifiers, especially ORCID identifiers (http://orcid.org). A unique identifier associated with each author will enable linking data from different publications, including CRediT contributions, in the future. As someone who has spent considerable effort analyzing large data sets related to the activities of scientists, I can testify to the value of unique identifiers—they decrease the inefficiency and uncertainty associated with sorting out ambiguous names. The overhead associated with collecting such data during the manuscript submission and publication processes can pay big dividends, both to the investigators involved and to the scientific community.

委员会还推荐使用标准个人标识符，尤其是ORCID标识符（http://orcid.org）。未来，与每位作者关联的唯一标识符将实现不同出版物间的数据链接，包括CRediT作者贡献度。作为一名花费大量精力分析科学家活动方面大数据集的人，我能证明唯一标识符的价值——它们减少了区分模糊姓名所带来的无效和不确定。在稿件提交和出版过程中，与收集这些数据关联的间接费用能给相关研究者和（整个）科学共同体带来大笔红利。

No doubt, a system that promotes authorship transparency will need to evolve as practices are refined and the cultures of different institutions adjust to the approach. But the new recommendations are a welcome major step. The wide adoption of the suggested system should go a long way toward making the roles of different individuals involved with a research paper much clearer, moving beyond the obscure author order code that dominates so much discussion today.

毫无疑问，随着实践（方法）的完善和不同机构文化对该（分类）法的适应，这一提升作者署名透明度的分类体系将需逐步发展。但新推荐的（作者贡献度体系）是受到欢迎的重要一步。该体系的广泛采用还有漫长的路要走，为了使参与研究论文的不同人的角色更加清晰，并超越含混不清的作者排序署名规则，这一规则成为现今很多讨论的主要议题。

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个人水平有限，翻译中必定存在很多问题，恳请各位专家同行多多指教，不胜感荷。