21 March 2025
Henry Gonnet and Prof. Samantha Broadhead, Leeds Arts University
https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3201-9211
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9469-1233
This discussion piece is written by two research enabling staff who work at a small specialist creative arts Higher Education Institution (HEI) in the UK. Many of the researchers at the HEI come from discipline areas such as graphics, illustration, textile design, popular music and filmmaking. Often the outputs researchers at the HEI produce are item types such as artefacts, audio, compositions, exhibitions, performances and videos. The research enabling staff at the HEI are in a small team of two, and their role (amongst other tasks) is to support the institution’s researchers in making their research outputs open. They provide advice to researchers on licensing, copyright and open access – as well as training and one-to-one support to ensure that researchers understand and work within the bounds of the various policies and procedures relating to research culture activity in the HEI.
Whilst undertaking this role it has come to light that there are three issues that creative arts researchers appear to encounter during their work. These are firstly around the understanding of creative arts’ contributions to knowledge in the wider sector. Secondly the language of CRediT can create a barrier for researchers in the creative arts. Finally, there is an inconsistency when acknowledging creative arts researchers as authors within collaborative and interdisciplinary research projects. Researchers have a responsibility to ensure that co-authors and contributors are properly cited in research at the institution as part of the HEI’s Ethics Policy. However, this practice is not as straightforward as it first appears.
Whilst journals often ask for researchers to be explicit when citing/acknowledging roles and contributions based on CRediT, it can be seen that the work creative arts researchers do is not always represented in the taxonomy. The taxonomy uses terms which are geared towards describing the key contributions to “traditional” research outputs such as journal articles and longform publications. The taxonomy includes fourteen terms which have been approved by the National Information Standards Organisation (NISO) as a standardised method for contributor acknowledgment. Although the definitions for the contributor roles stated in CRediT could be extended for use in arts research, there are some which are not a straightforward fit for many creative contributions. This is because the language used to describe the potential roles of contributors does not translate well to many of the contributions made within the arts discipline areas – especially when the contribution involves the act of ‘making’ as a knowledge creation tool. For example, what does “validity” mean within the context of creative arts research? Similarly, “formal analysis” for an arts researcher could mean an analysis of a piece of artwork’s aesthetic qualities, whereas CRediT describes it as the “application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyse or synthesize study data”. The role described as “writing – review & editing” could be expanded in the arts to refer to film editing, animation editing or photography editing.
In other words, there is not a shared meaning of these roles across all discipline areas. Another example would be the use of words such as ‘data’ that may have connotations to early career researchers or members of the public which are not conventionally associated with the creative arts. Leavy in “Method meets art: arts-based research practice” (2015) sees a distinction between collecting data in qualitative and quantitative methods and generating data in arts-based research, where rather than validating results she refers to arts outcomes as resonating with the audience/viewer.
The dissonance between CRediT and the creative arts research contributes to problems experienced when arts researchers collaborate with researchers outside their field, as their contributions are not always seen as the creation of new knowledge. As research enablers, we have experienced researchers coming to us believing that they have been part of a research project, but when we investigate further, we discover that they have not been cited as authors. In some cases, it is not explicit anywhere in the research record as to what the arts researcher’s contribution was, or (even worse) they might not have been mentioned at all.
Sometimes it seems as if researchers outside of the creative arts discipline area view the contributions of creative arts researchers as being illustrative rather than knowledge production, and their contributions are occasionally seen as part of facilitating public engagement activity by making the research more accessible and visible. However, for creative arts researchers the act of making, adapting or interpreting are methodologies which can lead to new knowledge and insights, and are not merely tools for illustrating somebody else’s research project. Misunderstandings such as this can have significant negative impact on the careers of arts researchers – for instance, a filmmaker might have contributed to many research projects, but because they have not been properly acknowledged there is no accurate record of their contribution to knowledge.
The experience of these attitudes within UK research culture by arts researchers highlights a need for better acknowledgement of epistemic diversity within widely used systems such as CRediT and national policy such as the UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity. We believe that those working in the creative arts as researchers and research enabling staff need to look towards ways in which CRediT can be adapted or expanded to work in the context of arts-based outputs and methodologies. This work could start to build better understanding and appreciation of the research ongoing in arts discipline areas by signposting to the wider research environment what artistic contributions to knowledge could be.
It is very important that arts researchers ensure their authorship and contributions will be acknowledged correctly before they begin work on any interdisciplinary research project through detailing them within a collaboration agreement.