Mapping CRediT-fAIR ↔ NISO CRediT
This page provides a crosswalk between NISO CRediT and CRediT-fAIR. Use it to migrate existing CRediT-tagged contributorship metadata into CRediT-fAIR, or to translate CRediT-fAIR outputs back into CRediT-compatible form for systems that only understand the original taxonomy.
At a glance
- 11 roles are identical and translate 1:1.
- 3 roles are revised in CRediT-fAIR (description and/or title); the slug differs but the conceptual mapping is direct.
- 4 roles are new in CRediT-fAIR and have no NISO CRediT equivalent. When emitting CRediT-only metadata, these contributions cannot be represented and should be acknowledged in narrative form.
Crosswalk table
| NISO CRediT role | CRediT-fAIR role | Comparison to CRediT |
|---|---|---|
| Conceptualization | Conceptualization | unchanged |
| Data curation | Data curation | unchanged |
| Formal analysis | Formal analysis | revised description |
| Funding acquisition | Funding acquisition | unchanged |
| Investigation | Investigation and Inquiry | renamed + revised |
| Methodology | Methodology | unchanged |
| Project administration | Project administration | unchanged |
| Resources | Resources | unchanged |
| Software | Production - Technical | renamed + revised |
| Supervision | Supervision | unchanged |
| Validation | Validation | unchanged |
| Visualization | Visualization | unchanged |
| Writing - original draft | Writing - original draft | unchanged |
| Writing - review & editing | Writing - review & editing | unchanged |
| (no equivalent) | Production - Creative | addition |
| (no equivalent) | Production - Social | addition |
| (no equivalent) | Reflective Analysis | addition |
| (no equivalent) | Relationship Development and Outreach | addition |
Migrating existing data
If you have CRediT-tagged contributorship data and want to convert it to CRediT-fAIR:
- The 11 unchanged roles transfer directly — same name, same meaning.
- Investigation → rename to Investigation and Inquiry.
- Software → rename to Production - Technical.
- Optionally, audit existing contributors against the 4 new roles — you may discover contributions that were previously squeezed into ill-fitting CRediT slots and now have a proper home.
Emitting CRediT-compatible output from CRediT-fAIR
When a downstream system requires NISO CRediT vocabulary (e.g. some publisher JATS XML pipelines):
- The 11 unchanged roles map directly.
- Investigation and Inquiry → emit as
Investigation. - Production - Technical → emit as
Software. - Production - Creative, Production - Social, Reflective Analysis, and Relationship Development and Outreach have no CRediT equivalent. The Tenzing for CRediT-fAIR app handles this by emitting these roles in a custom JATS namespace alongside the standard CRediT vocabulary, so CRediT-aware tools see what they expect and CRediT-fAIR-aware tools see the full picture.