CERIF Core

CERIF (=Common European Research Information Format) covers the domain of research information with a focus on the administrative and organizational aspects. It aims to provide machine-processable representation of research information and cover situations where research information crosses borders between organizations (or between organizations and people). This typically covers information interchanges between the Current Research Information Systems of these organizations, but other cases exist as well. The information interchanged is not necessarily intended to be public.

Overview

Persons, Groups and Organisation Units are Agents. Agents can perform Activities.

Persons can act on their own, in affiliation to or on behalf of an Organisation Unit or a Group (optionally in their Position). In the latter cases, an Affiliation Statement describes the connection. Multiple Affiliation Statements are possible.

A Group can have any number of Agents as members (so we track Memberships, one type of Activity). If members of an Organisation Unit are to be represented, Organisation Unit with Members can be used.

Membership is a specific type of Involvement in a Group or Organisation Unit. Other types are Employment and Education. Involvements can reference a Position that describes the capacities of the involved Agent.

Research is typically carried out in Projects. Projects need Resources, such as Funding. Bringing Resources of different kinds is a way how Agents can make Contributions to Projects.

Any Resource can be requested, offered, provided or actually used.

Projects typically make use of Infrastructure. Agents can make Contributions to Infrastructure.

Scientific and other Events support communication, including scholarly communication. Agents can make different Contributions to Events. An Event can have any number of Event Identifiers assigned, for instance the ConfIDent Identifier. Events can be organized within Event Series

Information and knowledge are typically stored in Documents, for instance Textual Documents. Agents can make different Contributions to Documents, most notably that of Authorship. Documents can be published in numerous Publication Channels Accessibility of Documents is a pressing issue, so it can be expressed in Textual Document Accessibility Specifications.

Agents prepare and submit Applications, for instance Funding Applications. This can occur in response to a Call for Applications, for instance a Call for Funding Applications, or outside of any such call, perhaps based on an implicit invitation to do so. Once submitted, an application, will go through some kind of evaluation process and in the end there will be a Decision. On the way to it there may be Evaluation Outcomes. Agents can make Contributions to Evaluation Outcomes, most notably by doing the Application_Review.

All the contributions mentioned above are subclasses of Contribution. A Contribution is another type of Activity. Contributions can be detailed with any number of Contribution Statements. These can in turn be further refined with Resource Usage Statements which represent the fact of a Resource being used for the Activity.

Expertise or Skills can be posessed by Agents. When joined with availability and willingness in Expertise and Time and Effort, it forms yet another subclass of Resource. Expertise and Skills can also be conditions for a Resource Offer, a specific subtype of a general Condition.

Prizes are conferred on Agents in Prize Awards.

An Agent can have any number of Agent Identifiers assigned, for instance the ORCID Identifier, ROR Identifier, ISNI Identifier, FundRef Identifier, Scopus Author Identifier, Wikidata Agent Identifier, or Local Agent Identifier.

A Resource can have any number of Resource Identifiers assigned, for instance the DOI Identifier, Wikidata Resource Identifier, PIDINST Identifier, or Local Resource Identifier.

Listings

Entities

• Agent
  • Person
  • Organisation Unit, Group (or Group_or_Organisation_Unit to represent the union of these two, or Organisation Unit with Members to represent the intersection of these two)
• Activity
  • Contribution
  • Contribution to Document
    • Authorship
  • Contribution to Project
  • Contribution to Event
  • Contribution to Evaluation Outcome
    • Application Review
  • Contribution_to_Infrastructure
  • Involvement
  • Membership
  • Employment
  • Education
• Affiliation
• Contribution Statement
• Textual Document Accessibility Specification
• Project
• Event
• Event Series
• Publication Channel
• Resource
  • Funding
  • Expertise and Time and Effort
  • Infrastructure
  • Document
  • Textual Document
• Resource Offer
  • Call for Applications
  • Call for Funding Applications
• Resource Request
  • Application
  • Funding Application
• Resource Usage Statement
• Condition
  • Expertise and Skills Condition
• Evaluation Outcome
• Decision
• Prize
• Prize Award
• Expertise and Skills
• Expertise and Skills Possession
• Agent Identifier
  • ORCID Identifier
  • ROR Identifier
  • ISNI Identifier
  • FundRef Identifier
  • Scopus Author Identifier
  • Wikidata Agent Identifier
  • Local Agent Identifier
• Resource Identifier
  • DOI identifier
  • Wikidata Resource Identifier
  • PIDINST Identifier
  • Local Resource Identifier
• Event Identifier
  • ConfIDent identifier

Data Types

• String
• Date, Date Range
• Boolean
• Decimal
• Multilingual String
• ORCID iD Type
• ROR ID Type
• URI Type
• DOI ID Type
  • PIDINST ID Type
  • ConfIDent ID Type
• Fundref ID Type
• ISNI ID Type
• Wikidata ID Type
• Scopus Author ID Type
• Local Agent ID Type
• Local Resource ID Type
• Person Name
• Physical Address
  • Simple Physical Address
  • Structured Physical Address
• Contact Information
  • Postal Address
  • Visiting Address
  • Electronic Address
  • Email Address
  • Website Address
  • Phone Number
• Position
• Language, Country, Script
• Language Tag
• Monetary Amount
• Codes for languages: ISO 639-1 Alpha2 Code, ISO 639-2B Alpha3 Code, ISO 639-2T Alpha3 Code
• Codes for countries: ISO 3166 Alpha2 Code
• Codes for currencies: ISO 4217 Alpha Code
• Codes for scripts: ISO 15924 Alpha4 Code

Illustrative Diagram

Usage

The Core is seldom used on its own, one almost always needs to add one or several additional modules. We include the following example:

• Person

Status

This is the experimental Core of CERIF, the result of the CERIF Refactoring Pilot project started in 2021 by euroCRIS. The scope, structure or any other aspect can change. It has not been approved as the official standard yet.

Credits

The development is carried out by Jan Dvořák and Dragan Ivanović. We very much appreciate the feedback and corrections by José Francisco Salm jr.

Development

We follow some guidelines and use some tools.