Today I want to talk about how to apply the CRediT taxonomy to conference presentations. CRediT stands for the Contributor Role Taxonomy and it outlines 14 defined roles that capture individual contributions towards group research outputs. The concept is fantastic and, when implemented, it provides role clarity within research teams and improved accuracy and transparency on CVs.
Overall, the CRediT system does a fairly good job of covering the possible contributions team members can make, particularly for academic journal articles and other written work.
However, when it comes to academic conference presentations, I think CRediT falls a bit short. Specifically, there is currently no Contributor role for Presenting which, obviously, is the main activity involved in presenting at a conference. Therefore, I propose that CRediT should add a 15th contribution role as follows:
Presentation Delivery. Definition: Communication of scholarly work to an audience through a conference presentation or other scholarly forum, including, where applicable, responding to questions and engaging in discussion.
This definition is broad so as to be inclusive of a wide range of possible research sharing activities, rather than being narrowly focused on just poster and oral presentations.
I also think that the current Visualization role can be used for Presentation Development, rather than adding another new role for that. Visualization is broader but inclusive of creating visual research outputs so I think it works.
Example CV entry:
Here is how this might look when applied to a real CV example:
Metersky, K., Read, E., Kocum, L., Al-Hamad, A., Guruge, S., Hubley, P., Muhunthan, M., & Kogan, A. (2026, September 28). Clinical nurse educators in Canadian hospitals: Lived experiences and role realities [Oral presentation]. Nursing Leadership Network of Ontario Conference, Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON, Canada. Contribution: Conceptualization; Methodology; Investigation; Formal analysis; Writing – review & editing; Visualization; Presentation delivery.
Although it is often the case that the first author of a conference presentation is also the presenter, there are exceptions where additional clarification is helpful. For instance, in the example above, I co-presented this research with my colleague (first author), but that is not apparent without the Contribution statement. There are also times when you might be the first author but not be a presenter. Therefore, I think this additional contribution role provides important clarity for these types of research outputs.
This Matters for Graduate Students Especially
Conference presentations are often team efforts, with different people contributing to the research abstract, visual materials, and presentation delivery. This is particularly relevant for graduate students, who may make substantial contributions without being the first author or the person who delivers the presentation.
A contribution statement can help make those contributions visible. Rather than simply listing conference presentations on their CV, graduate students can demonstrate the specific research and communication skills that they have developmed through collaborative work.
Closing thoughts…
The goal isn’t to make academic CVs longer or more annoying. It’s to make them more informative and to ensure that meaningful contributions to collaborative scholarship are visible.
Potential next actions:
Take a look at your CV: Is there a co-authored conference presentation where your contribution isn’t immediately apparent? Consider whether a brief CRediT-aligned contribution statement would help tell a more complete story.
For those who supervise graduate students: Do you encourage and guide your students to document their individual contributions to collaborative research and conference presentations?
References:
To learn more about CRediT check out their website: https://credit.niso.org/
