This week the Rogue Scholar science blog archive has launched a new feature: contributor roles. Blog posts can now have contributor roles attached to each author, and this information is shown in the Rogue Scholar and Crossref metadata.

We have discussed contributor roles for blog posts for several months, in particular with the ropensci team. And when the ropensci blog launched support for contributor roles two weeks ago, Rogue Scholar finally had blog post metadata with contributor roles. ropensci implemented the following roles, and they are now all picked up by Rogue Scholar:

The last blog post looks like this in the Rogue Scholar frontend:

In the backend InvenioRDM makes a distinction between authors/creators and contributors, similar to the DataCite data model it is based on. Therefore Rogue Scholar first lists the authors (who can't have a role in DataCite), followed by the contributors (who must have a role, aka contributorType).

Crossref metadata support the roles editor and translator, so this information is passed on during DOI registration, as Rogue Scholar uses Crossref DOIs. Whether these roles are shown in a formatted citation depends on the citation style, and currently this is probably the exception.

At this time neither InvenioRDM (the repository platform powering Rogue Scholar) nor Crossref support multiple contributor roles. Crossref plans to add support for CrediT contributor roles in 2026, and at this point might add support for multiple roles, which are common in CrediT.

Rogue Scholar and Crossref support other contributor roles currently not used by the ropensci blog, e.g. reviewer. And Rogue Scholar will support CrediT contributor roles as soon as they are implemented by Crossref.

Contributor roles in blog feeds

The rOpenSci blogs (in English, Spanish, and French) use JSON Feed as syndication format, and that is how Rogue Scholar automatically receives content and metadata. JSON Feed supports custom extensions that start with an underscore, e.g.

      "authors": [
        {
          "name": "Maëlle Salmon",
          "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2815-0399",
          "avatar": "https://ropensci.org/img/team/maelle_salmon.jpg",
          "_roles": ["author"]
        },
        {
          "name": "Steffi LaZerte",
          "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7690-8360",
          "avatar": "https://github.com/steffilazerte.png",
          "_roles": ["editor"]
        },
        {
          "name": "Yanina Bellini Saibene",
          "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4522-7466",
          "avatar": "https://github.com/yabellini.png",
          "_roles": ["author"]
        }
      ],

For blogs using Atom feeds, the specification allows mixing in other namespaces that define custom XML elements. For contributor roles we can use the relators vocabulary from the Library of Congress that defines the above three roles (edt editor, trl translator, ive interviewee, but also rev reviewer), e.g. 

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
      xmlns:mrel="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/">
  ...
  <author>
    <name>Maëlle Salmon</name>
    <uri>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2815-0399</uri>
   </author>
   <author>
     <name>Steffi LaZerte</name>
     <uri>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7690-8360</uri>
     <mrel:roleTerm valueURI="http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/edt">edt</mrel:roleTerm>
   </author>
   <author>
     <name>Yanina Bellini Saibene</name>
     <uri>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4522-7466</uri>
   </author>
   ...
  </feed>

Blogs that provide a JSON API and are database-driven (e.g. WordPress, Blogger, Ghost, or Substack) can be extended if they are open source, e.g. via a WordPress plugin.

Other uses of contributor roles

Rogue Scholar is a science blog archive, so contributor roles for other types of scholarly content, e.g. datasets or software, are out of scope. The DataCite data model currently doesn't support roles for creators, making it difficult to implement CrediT, or contributor roles adapted to non-textual content types.

As a science blog archive, Rogue Scholar is not really concerned with research evaluation, and whether contributor roles might help with this work.

Please use Slack, email, Mastodon, or Bluesky if you have any questions or comments regarding Rogue Scholar contributor roles.

Rogue Scholar is a scholarly infrastructure that is free for all authors and readers. You can support Rogue Scholar with a one-time or recurring donation or by becoming a sponsor.

References

  1. Salmon, M., Bellini Saibene, Y., & LaZerte, S. (2025, October 14). Recognition Beyond Blog Post Authors. rOpenSci - Open Tools for Open Science. https://doi.org/10.59350/510pg-zzf58
  2. Salmon, M., LaZerte, S., & Bellini Saibene, Y. (2025, October 22). ¡Prepárense para el lanzamiento! Paquetes enviados al R-multiverse. Ropensci - herramientas abiertas para una ciencia abierta. https://doi.org/10.59350/b73e6-3wm19
  3. Bellini, A., Casalla, L., Bellini Saibene, Y., & LaZerte, S. (2023, June 6). Meeting the Stars of the R-Universe: PEcAn, an Open Source Project to Take Care of the Planet. rOpenSci - Open Tools for Open Science. https://doi.org/10.59350/s8m95-ap410
  4. Brand, A., Allen, L., Altman, M., Hlava, M., & Scott, J. (2015). Beyond authorship: Attribution, contribution, collaboration, and credit. Learned Publishing, 28(2), 151–155. https://doi.org/10.1087/20150211