Improving Acknowledgments Sections To Better Credit Research Contributors

Crediting of research contributions is critical for career advancement and the allocation of research funding. However, some research contributors are mentioned only in an acknowledgments section, which results in relatively little recognition, because acknowledged contributions are not indexed by scholarly databases. Here, we contextualize this shortfall in terms of the broader contributorship movement to recognize specific research contributions rather than relying on the broad, vague, and sometimes restrictive concept of academic authorship. After reviewing three routes that advance contributorship, we focus on enhancing the function and usefulness of acknowledgments sections, proposing that: 1) when acknowledging individuals, authors include their ORCID numbers (subject to the acknowledgees’ approval); 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 (e.g. full names, ORCID, roles) of acknowledgees in JATS-XML files. Implementing any of these steps could lead some scholarly databases to index non-author contributors. The ensuing increase in visibility for research contributors such as technicians and library professionals should result in greater recognition of their roles, including by those who allocate resources.