Use Case Contributors

Owned by Sainabou Jallow
Last updated: Apr 05, 2023
2 min read

What factors do we use to determine who is listed as a contributor to a Use Case (and more generally)? Are there any established standards for this?

 

Option 1

To be listed as a contributor, one of the following criteria must be met:

  • Involved in identifying and designing the use case.

  • Conducted research, facilitated stakeholder engagement and collected/synthesized data pertaining to the use case topic.

  • Participated in drafting or revising the use case; and approved the final version. 

 Guideline:

  • List core authors of the use case.

  • List contributors in alphabetical order - when possible and have acquired their permission - include government ministries and organizations (this can support in ensuring institutional validation of the use case), as well as individuals that no longer work on GovStack but were part of the initial use case work i.e. with the unconditional social cash transfer and maternal care use cases. 

 

Option 2

 Follow existing standard for recognizing all contributions to a research output - the Contributor Roles Taxonomy CRediT.

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) is a high-level taxonomy, including 14 roles, that can be used to represent the roles typically played by contributors to research output. ** Many journals and publishers have adopted the CRediT system in their submission process.

The model allows contributors to share a description of their input, using 14 pre-defined contributor roles: 1. conceptualization; 2. data curation; 3. formal analysis; 4. funding acquisition; 5. investigation; 6. methodology; 7. project administration; 8. resources; 9. software; 10. supervision; 11. validation; 12. visualization; 13. writing – original draft; 14. writing – review & editing.

Guideline:

  • All contributors should be listed and assigned a role, and multiple roles are possible. This provides a detailed description of diverse contributions to the work.

  • If multiple contributors are assigned the same role, the degree of contribution can be quantified, by including ‘lead’, ‘equal’ or ‘supporting’ next to the role.

  • All contributors should be able to review and approve the assigned roles.

  • It is the responsibility of the Product Owner and lead use case author to assign and confirm the roles.

Example: A.T.K.: conceptualization (lead), data curation (lead), formal analysis (lead), investigation, methodology (lead), project administration (lead), resources (lead), visualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing (equal); J.S.: conceptualization (supporting), formal analysis (supporting), methodology (supporting), supervision (lead), writing—review and editing (equal); H.R.: conceptualization (supporting), data curation (supporting), project administration (supporting), validation and writing—review and editing (supporting); D.R.: conceptualization (supporting), formal analysis (supporting), methodology (supporting), resources (supporting), supervision (supporting), validation and writing—review and editing (supporting)

 

Questions

  • Should we create separate category for authors and contributors?

  • For EPR and construction permit:

    • Should the entire country Engagement Committee be listed as a contributor or the specific focal point(s) that worked with the government on developing the user journey of the digital service?

    • Do we include country government representatives?

  • For Technical Committee contributions, individual contributors can be listed based on BB they’re working on (most be a BB listed in the use case).