Improving Acknowledgments Sections To Better Credit Research Contributors

Formal recognition of research contributions is critical for career advancement and the allocation of research funding. However, some contributions are mentioned only in the acknowledgments section, which are not indexed by scholarly databases, resulting in almost no recognition for those involved. We contextualize this shortfall in terms of contributorship, the movement to recognize specific research contributions rather than relying on authorship. Broadening the range of recognized individuals is currently advanced through two routes: reducing restrictions on authorship, and unbundling manuscripts into smaller elements, such as datasets and protocols, that receive their own attribution. Here we focus on a third route, enhancing the contents and metadata of acknowledgments sections, by capitalizing on existing infrastructure and standards. We propose: 1) when acknowledging individuals, authors include ORCIDs (subject to the acknowledgees’ approval) and, where applicable provide CRediT information; 2) publishers solicit identities of acknowledgees in a similar way to how they do so for authors in their submission portals; and 3) publishers include metadata of acknowledgees in JATS-XML files. Implementing these steps could encourage scholarly databases to index non-author contributors. The ensuing increase in visibility for research contributors, such as technicians and library professionals could result in greater recognition of non-author roles.