Definition

msp:author declares the primary creator or originating responsible party for a resource. The author may be a person or an organization.

The author term supports attribution and provenance context. It should not be confused with msp:reviewer, msp:provenance, msp:authority, or msp:trust. Authorship identifies creation or origination; review, lineage, authority, and trust are separate interpretive signals.

Usage

The canonical MSP-1 form uses type to distinguish a person from an organization.

{
  "msp:author": {
    "name": "Mark Johnson",
    "type": "Person",
    "id": "mark-johnson",
    "role": "author"
  }
}

Organization authorship may be declared when an organization is the originating responsible party.

{
  "msp:author": {
    "name": "MSP-1",
    "type": "Organization",
    "id": "https://msp-1.org/",
    "role": "publisher"
  }
}

Compatibility note

The preferred MSP-1 field is type. The JSON-LD field @type may appear in compatibility contexts, but canonical MSP-1 author declarations should use type.

{
  "msp:author": {
    "@type": "Person",
    "name": "Example Author"
  }
}

Guidance

• The author should be declared as an object.
• The object should include name and type.
• A stable id is strongly recommended for durable attribution.
• The id may be a site-local identifier, URL, profile reference, ORCID, or other persistent string.
• Author metadata should not be treated as a trust guarantee or authority claim by itself.

Related Terms