For Journals

Requirements

If you think your journal could benefit from having a Contribution Table, you would have to think about the following items:

1. What will my journal's config format look like?
2. Will I enforce it as a mandatory part of a manuscript submission?
3. Will it be included in print or only in the PDF, or as part of the online supplementary?
4. How will your journal style the Contribution Table?
5. How will I ensure the Contribution Table is machine-readable

Points 3-5 are rather technical questions and hence can be considered at a later date, but they should be considered at some point

Curated Categories

It would be undesirable if each journal had their own name for the same category concept, e.g. :

• 'programming' & 'coding'
• 'experiments' & 'labwork'
• 'manuscript', 'manuscript writing', 'writing manuscript', 'writing', 'paper writing'

As a solution, we have a listed of curated categories below. In the drawing up of your own journal-specific format, try to pick items from the list below, whenever possible.

In the event that you have something very specific (maybe even unique to your journal), then you are of course free to add it your your format.

Keep in mind that not all the categories have to be part of your config. Only a subset will likely be relevant for your journal.

Do let us know!

We really like to receive feedback on items that we could add to this list! Perhaps you are the first journal in your field to adopt a Contribution Table, and therefore need some new categories. You can let us know and we will add it to the list!

Official curated categories

• Project Conception
• Experiments
• Simulations
• Manuscript
• Figure design
• Method development
• Scripts
• Feedback
• Resources
• Funding

Journal-specific config format

In some cases, you may want to ensure that authors include specific categories in their CTAB, or provide them with a solid selection of categories that they can start with. You can achieve this through the CTAB config string.

This is a JSON string that users can paste into the editor.

This feature is not stable

The CTAB config string is still very much a work in progress. It is likely it will get more functionality in the future, but for now it only provides a way to template a collection of categories (e.g 'experiments', 'STAR-funding', 'data-formatting', 'communication','analysis')

An example can be found below

{
	"configVersion":"0.1",
	"id":"MyJournalName",
	"categories":["Experiments", "Theory", "Manuscript", "Coffee"],
	"required": [0,0,0,1]
}

The format is split up between required and optional keys. Optional keys can be left out, but add some functionality when added.

Required keys

• configVersion - The version of the CTAB Config.
• id - Some kind of identifier. This so one can trace back whose format this is, if the file/string is ever encountered in the wild
• categories - The categories you want the users to include. These will be loaded in as a template in the editor.

Optional keys

• required - A boolean array that indicates whether a category must be included for submission to your journal. By default all categories should be seen as optional.

Users can use your CTAB config string by pasting it into the editor under Select Template > Config String

Styling a CTAB

The styling of a CTAB is up to the journal, so that it can be made to integrate well with the design language and colour palette that the journal employs. Font choice and colour choice are entirely up to the journal.

In the event that you wish to change the colours of the contribution-degrees (i.e. the squares indicating the degree of contribution), it is recommended that a legend is added somewhere to indicate what each colour corresponds to.