The contributor roles for randomized controlled trials and the proposal for a novel CRediT-RCT

Area of Science:

• Bibliometrics
• Scientific Publishing
• Clinical Trials

Background:

• Increasing author numbers necessitate clear role definitions.
• The Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) aims to define author contributions.
• Empirical data on CRediT usage in clinical trials is lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide empirical data on CRediT application in randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
• To identify limitations of the current CRediT taxonomy for RCTs.
• To propose an improved taxonomy, CRediT-RCT, for defining author roles in RCTs.

Main Methods:

• PubMed database search for RCTs (July 2017 - October 2019).
• Inclusion of Public Library of Science (PLoS) publications for embedded CRediT metadata.
• Analysis of author roles and their correlations within included RCTs.

Main Results:

• 446 articles and 4,185 authors analyzed.
• Conceptualization (44.9%) and investigation (48.8%) were most common author roles.
• Funding acquisition, project administration, supervision, and original draft writing were associated with corresponding authorship.
• First authors were strongly associated with original draft writing but less with review, editing, or supervision.

Conclusions:

• The study offers empirical insights into CRediT use in RCTs.
• Limitations of the existing CRediT taxonomy for clinical trials were identified.
• A new taxonomy, CRediT-RCT, with 10 roles is proposed to enhance author role clarity in RCTs.