Request for comment: New contributorType: "Reviewer"

[KellyStathis]

The DataCite Metadata Schema includes a controlled vocabulary for contributor types—contributorType—to connect research outputs to contributors. We are looking to expand this vocabulary to cover use cases where a reviewer contributes to a resource, as suggested in #152.

Proposed new contributorType: Reviewer

Term: Reviewer

Definition: A person or organization responsible for conducting an assessment or evaluation of the content of the resource

Usage Notes: May be used for crediting a person or organization who reviews an award, publication, or other research output, including those who perform peer review.

Providing feedback

We are interested in your thoughts on this proposal and possibilities for improvement. Contribute your feedback by leaving a comment on this post. You are welcome to reply by answering any or all of the questions below:

• Would the change work for your use case? Why or why not?
• Is there something you would like to see implemented differently?
• Which aspects of the change would benefit from clarification, if any?

If you would like to share feedback without creating a GitHub account, you can email us at support@datacite.org and indicate whether you’d like us to post a comment on your behalf.

This discussion will close on 6 March 2026, but you can still submit feedback on DataCite Suggestions.

[NelliTaller]

In Germany, we frequently register dissertations and similar academic works where the reviewers (Gutachter) are an important part of the scholarly record and are often expected to be included in the metadata. Currently, there is no appropriate contributor type to represent this role. Using Other is only a workaround and does not provide the semantic clarity needed for consistent metadata.
We therefore suggest introducing a dedicated Reviewer contributor type. This would better reflect common academic practices and improve interoperability across repositories and metadata consumers.

[KellyStathis]

Hi @NelliTaller, thanks for the feedback on this! "Reviewer" is currently in the draft for Schema 4.8: https://datacite-metadata-schema.readthedocs.io/en/4.8_draft/appendices/appendix-1/contributorType/#reviewer. Please let us know if you have any comments.

[NelliTaller]

Perfect! Thank you!
The proposed description fits our use case well. One possible improvement would be to explicitly mention dissertations in the usage notes, as dissertation reviewers are a common use case for us. However, dissertations can also reasonably be considered a type of "research output", so the current wording is already applicable.