DMP lifecycle - CASRAI (2026)
The set of phases through which a Data Management Plan passes from initial drafting at proposal stage, through active project execution, to project closeout and post-project preservation.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DMP RDA-JSON-LD - CASRAI (2026)
A JSON-LD context and ontology rendering of the RDA DMP Common Standard, enabling DMP graphs to be expressed as linked data and merged with other research-information graphs.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ezDMP - CASRAI (2026)
A funder-focused DMP creation service that guides researchers through funder-specific (originally US NSF directorates') requirements and produces both narrative and structured outputs.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DataDMP - CASRAI (2026)
A DMP authoring and management platform developed in Germany that implements the RDA DMP Common Standard and emphasises integration with institutional research-data infrastructures.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Argos (OpenAIRE) - CASRAI (2026)
OpenAIRE's open-source DMP authoring service, designed from the outset around the RDA DMP Common Standard and integrated with European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) and OpenAIRE Research Graph services.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DMPonline (DCC product) - CASRAI (2026)
The UK Digital Curation Centre's hosted instance of the DMPRoadmap platform, providing DMP authoring for UK and international institutions against funder-specific templates.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DMPRoadmap (DMP Tool) - CASRAI (2026)
An open-source Ruby on Rails platform for creating, reviewing, and exporting Data Management Plans, jointly developed by the UK Digital Curation Centre and the University of California Curation Center, and deployed under different brands (notably DMPonline and DMPTool).
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DMP machine-readable expression - CASRAI (2026)
The structured serialisation of a DMP's content in a format (JSON, JSON-LD, XML) that conforming software can parse, validate, and act upon without human re-interpretation.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DMP narrative - CASRAI (2026)
The human-readable prose portion of a Data Management Plan, typically organised under the headings of the applicable funder or institutional template.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DMP template - CASRAI (2026)
A funder-, institution-, or community-specific structured set of questions and guidance used to elicit the content of a Data Management Plan from researchers.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

RDA DMP Common Standard - CASRAI (2026)
A community-developed application profile, maintained by the Research Data Alliance DMP Common Standards Working Group, defining the core entities, properties, and JSON schema for expressing machine-actionable DMPs.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Machine-actionable DMP (maDMP) - CASRAI (2026)
A machine-actionable data management plan (maDMP) is a data management plan structured so that its content — identifiers, dates, cost lines, repository and licence choices — can be read, queried, and acted on by software, most commonly by conforming to the RDA DMP Common Standard, rather than existing only as free-text narrative in a PDF or Word document.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data Management Plan (DMP) - CASRAI (2026)
A Data Management Plan (DMP) is a required condition of award at most major research funders and many institutions, setting out how a project's research data will be handled across its life: data types and volume, metadata standards, storage/security, access and sharing, and long-term preservation. It is the umbrella term for a family of more specific CASRAI entries covering the DMP active phase, machine-actionable DMP (maDMP) format, climate impact statements in a DMP, and sensitive-data handling in a DMP.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Aggregator service - CASRAI (2026)
A service that harvests, harmonises, and re-exposes metadata and (sometimes) content from many upstream sources, providing a unified search, browse, or query interface across the aggregated corpus; canonical examples include OpenAIRE, BASE, CORE, and OpenAlex.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data safe haven - CASRAI (2026)
A secure data-handling environment that allows controlled, audited access to sensitive datasets for approved research, applying technical, physical, and procedural safeguards; effectively a synonym for trusted research environment (TRE) in much current usage, though the term has older roots in NHS information governance.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Five Safes framework - CASRAI (2026)
A framework for the safe use of sensitive data in research, articulated by the UK Office for National Statistics, that organises controls under five dimensions: Safe People, Safe Projects, Safe Settings, Safe Data, and Safe Outputs.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Trusted research environment - CASRAI (2026)
A secure computing environment — typically delivered as a remote-access workspace with controlled inbound/outbound data flows — that allows accredited researchers to analyse sensitive data in situ without exporting the data, supporting privacy-preserving secondary research use.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Sensitive-data repository - CASRAI (2026)
A repository specifically designed to hold sensitive research data — typically personal data, health data, criminal-justice data, commercially-confidential data, or culturally-sensitive Indigenous data — with enhanced access controls, audit logging, contractual access conditions, and (often) a secure analysis environment.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Persistent data identifier - CASRAI (2026)
A persistent identifier (typically a DataCite DOI, but also IGSN for samples, Handle, ARK, or other PID-scheme identifier) assigned to a research dataset to support stable citation, attribution, and resolution over the long term.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Dataset landing page - CASRAI (2026)
The human-readable web page that a dataset's persistent identifier (typically a DataCite DOI) resolves to, presenting the dataset's title, creators, description, identifiers, dates, version history, related works, access conditions, and a link to download or request the data.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles - CASRAI (2026)
The Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles is the specific 2014 FORCE11 document — produced by its Data Citation Synthesis Group, synthesising earlier statements from the US National Academies, DataCite, and the CODATA-ICSTI Task Group on Data Citation — that established the eight data citation principles as the field’s reference standard.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data citation principle - CASRAI (2026)
The data citation principles are the eight normative rules — importance, credit and attribution, evidence, unique identification, access, persistence, specificity and verifiability, and interoperability — set out in FORCE11’s 2014 Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles, defining what it means to cite a dataset properly rather than merely mentioning it in prose.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data publication platform - CASRAI (2026)
A platform that supports the publication of research data as a citable artefact — assigning a persistent identifier, presenting a landing page, and applying review, curation, or peer-review processes — distinct from purely depositional storage.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Domain repository - CASRAI (2026)
A domain repository accepts data from a defined discipline or data type and builds its deposit workflow around that field's own metadata schema, controlled vocabularies, quality-control checks and reuse conventions — GenBank and SRA for sequence data, the Protein Data Bank for macromolecular structures, ICPSR for social-science survey microdata. It is distinguished from a generalist repository by subject-specific curation rather than uniform, discipline-agnostic deposit rules. A funder requiring deposit in an established discipline repository is referring to this type.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Generalist repository - CASRAI (2026)
A generalist repository accepts research outputs regardless of subject area or data type, applying uniform, discipline-agnostic deposit rules — a persistent identifier (typically a DataCite DOI), basic descriptive metadata and file-format flexibility — rather than the subject-specific metadata schemas, controlled vocabularies and curation workflows a domain repository builds around one data type. Zenodo, Figshare, Dryad and OSF are instances. A generalist repository typically satisfies a funder's data-availability requirement only where no established domain repository exists for that data type.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Discipline-specific repository - CASRAI (2026)
A repository whose scope is bounded to a particular research discipline or sub-discipline, with curation practices, metadata schemas, and community standards tailored to that domain's data types, terminologies, and norms.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

FAIRsharing (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
A curated, community-driven registry of databases, standards (metadata, identifiers, formats, terminologies), and data policies relevant to research data, maintained at the University of Oxford with linkage to funders, journals, and standards organisations.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Re3data (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
Registry of Research Data Repositories: a global registry, operated by DataCite and partner institutions, that lists research data repositories worldwide with descriptive metadata about their disciplines, content types, access conditions, and policies, helping researchers locate suitable repositories for deposit and discovery.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

UK Data Service (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
The UK Data Service is the UK's principal social and economic data infrastructure, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). It holds the UK's major government and academic survey data (including Understanding Society), census microdata, a qualitative data archive and international macro-data resources, and is the UK's principal node within CESSDA. It is distinguished from a general deposit service by operating tiered access — open, safeguarded and controlled — governed by the Five Safes framework rather than a single access condition.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ICPSR (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research: a consortium-membership-funded data archive based at the University of Michigan that holds and curates over 10,000 social-science research datasets, providing access to member institutions worldwide.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Harvard Dataverse (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
A free research-data repository operated by Harvard University on the open-source Dataverse software platform, accepting datasets from researchers worldwide, minting DataCite DOIs, and serving as the flagship instance of the global Dataverse network.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Dryad (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
A non-profit generalist research data repository operated by Dryad Data Inc. (in partnership with the California Digital Library) that publishes peer-reviewed-paper-linked datasets, mints DataCite DOIs, and applies curation review before publication.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Figshare (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
Figshare is a concrete instance of the generalist repository type rather than a category of its own: like Zenodo, Dryad or OSF it accepts research outputs across disciplines and data types under a single deposit workflow, rather than applying the subject-specific curation a domain repository builds around one data type. It was founded in 2011 and has been commercially backed by Digital Science since a January 2012 relaunch.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Zenodo (concept) - CASRAI (2026)
A free generalist research repository operated by CERN and developed under OpenAIRE that accepts deposits of datasets, software, publications, presentations, posters, and other research artefacts, minting DataCite DOIs and providing free preservation up to a per-record size limit.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

GitHub mirror - CASRAI (2026)
A copy of a Git repository (or set of repositories) hosted on GitHub that tracks an upstream source repository elsewhere, typically maintained for redundancy, visibility, or community-engagement reasons rather than as the canonical primary copy.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Software Heritage archive - CASRAI (2026)
A non-profit international initiative based at Inria that systematically crawls, archives, and preserves the world's publicly available source code, including its full version-control history, and issues persistent identifiers (Software Hash Identifiers, SWHIDs) to every archived artefact.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Code repository - CASRAI (2026)
A version-controlled storage location for source code, typically operated on top of a distributed version-control system such as Git, exposing the code's full revision history, branches, tags, and (often) collaboration features such as issues, pull requests, and code review.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Tissue bank - CASRAI (2026)
A specific kind of biobank focused on the collection, processing, storage, and distribution of human tissue samples (typically solid tissue specimens from surgical or post-mortem sources), governed under tissue-banking regulation in the relevant jurisdiction.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Sample repository - CASRAI (2026)
A repository for physical research samples — geological, environmental, biological, or material — that catalogues, stores, and provides access to samples for downstream analysis, often issuing persistent identifiers (IGSN, DataCite DOI) for citation and provenance tracking.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Biorepository - CASRAI (2026)
A facility or organisation that collects, processes, stores, and distributes biological materials and their associated data for research, encompassing both human and non-human samples, distinguished from a 'biobank' by usage in some communities to denote broader scope or specific research projects.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Biobank - CASRAI (2026)
An organised collection of biological samples (typically human samples such as blood, tissue, DNA, urine) together with their associated clinical, demographic, and lifestyle data, governed for use in biomedical research.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

National data infrastructure - CASRAI (2026)
A coordinated, nationally-scoped programme and set of services for the storage, sharing, and reuse of research data within a country, typically combining funding policy, technical infrastructure (repositories, compute, federation), training, and governance.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data hub - CASRAI (2026)
A central node in a data ecosystem that aggregates, harmonises, and brokers access to data from multiple upstream sources, exposing the harmonised data to downstream consumers via curated APIs, query interfaces, or download endpoints.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Federated data infrastructure - CASRAI (2026)
A data infrastructure in which data, services, and access controls remain distributed across multiple independent nodes (typically operated by different organisations) but are made discoverable, queryable, and usable as a unified resource through shared protocols, vocabularies, and identity-federation.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data warehouse - CASRAI (2026)
A central repository of structured data, integrated from multiple operational sources, modelled for analytical querying (typically with a star or snowflake schema), and optimised for read-heavy workloads supporting reporting and decision-making.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data lake - CASRAI (2026)
A storage repository that holds large volumes of structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data in their native formats, deferring schema-on-write requirements so that data can be ingested cheaply and only structured at the time of read or analysis.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data commons - CASRAI (2026)
A shared data resource — often combined with shared computing and analysis tools — governed by a community under defined access and contribution rules, designed to enable many users to use and add to the resource for collective benefit.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data Trust - CASRAI (2026)
A legal and organisational structure in which a fiduciary intermediary holds, governs, and brokers access to a body of data on behalf of its contributors and beneficiaries, applying agreed terms of access, use, and accountability.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

World Data System certification - CASRAI (2026)
World Data System certification refers to two different things depending on the period. Before 2017 the World Data System ran its own certification process for its Regular and Network Members, evaluating the operations of scientific-data centres directly. From 2017 WDS folded that certification function into the merged CoreTrustSeal scheme, formed jointly with the Data Seal of Approval. A repository described as WDS-certified on the basis of an assessment after 2017 therefore holds CoreTrustSeal, not a separate WDS credential.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

CoreTrustSeal - CASRAI (2026)
CoreTrustSeal is the entry-level, community-run certification for trustworthy digital repositories. It emerged in 2017 from the merger of two previously separate schemes, the Data Seal of Approval (DSA) and the ICSU World Data System (WDS) certification, which combined their requirements into a single set rather than continuing to run parallel, only partly compatible certifications. It is distinguished from higher-tier schemes by scope and depth of assessment rather than by subject coverage.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Trusted digital repository - CASRAI (2026)
A digital repository whose mission, governance, technical infrastructure, and procedures have been independently assessed against a recognised standard (e.g. CoreTrustSeal, nestor seal, ISO 16363) and judged trustworthy to preserve digital content over the long term.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

EOSC Federation - CASRAI (2026)
The architectural model adopted by EOSC for federating heterogeneous national, thematic, and pan-European research-data infrastructures into a single user-facing layer, with shared identity and access management, monitoring, accounting, helpdesk, and service onboarding.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

EOSC Marketplace - CASRAI (2026)
The EOSC Marketplace is the discovery and access catalogue for services within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) — data sources, computing, processing, networking, security, sharing and discovery, and training services from providers across the EOSC Federation. It is not a repository or preservation service in its own right, and listing or access through the Marketplace does not by itself satisfy a funder's data-deposit requirement.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Crossref deposit XML - CASRAI (2026)
The XML schema family maintained by Crossref that publishers and content-registration members use to submit metadata when minting Crossref DOIs, with distinct sub-schemas for journals, books, conference proceedings, preprints, peer reviews, grants, and standards.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DataCite Metadata Schema - CASRAI (2026)
The XML/JSON schema (current version 4.x) maintained by the DataCite Metadata Working Group that defines the mandatory, recommended, and optional metadata properties to be supplied when registering a DOI through DataCite.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

RIOXX - CASRAI (2026)
Research Outputs Information Exchange XML (RIOXX): a UK-originated application profile for institutional-repository metadata, layered on Dublin Core, designed to capture funder, project, and licence information for OA-compliance reporting, currently maintained at v3.0.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

MODS - CASRAI (2026)
Metadata Object Description Schema: a Library of Congress XML schema for descriptive bibliographic metadata, designed as a richer alternative to Dublin Core and a more flexible alternative to MARC for library, archive, and repository contexts.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

METS - CASRAI (2026)
Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard: a Library of Congress-maintained XML schema for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata for digital library objects, providing a wrapper around content files and metadata sections.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

RDF triple store - CASRAI (2026)
A database management system specialised for storing and querying RDF (Resource Description Framework) statements — subject-predicate-object triples (or named-graph quads) — typically with a SPARQL query engine on top.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

SPARQL endpoint - CASRAI (2026)
An HTTP endpoint that accepts SPARQL queries (the W3C-standard query language for RDF) against an RDF dataset and returns results in standard formats (XML, JSON, CSV, TSV), implementing the SPARQL 1.1 Protocol.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Linked Data Fragments - CASRAI (2026)
A family of Web interfaces for publishing RDF data — ranging from data dumps through SPARQL endpoints to lightweight Triple Pattern Fragments — designed to allow clients to query large RDF datasets without overloading the server.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ResourceSync - CASRAI (2026)
ANSI/NISO Z39.99: a framework for synchronising resources between a source server and one or more destination servers using Web-based sitemaps with extensions for change lists, incremental updates, and push notifications.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

OAI-ORE - CASRAI (2026)
Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange: a set of specifications, complementary to OAI-PMH, that define how to describe and exchange aggregations of Web resources (a 'compound digital object') using standard Web Architecture and Linked Data principles.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

JATS XML - CASRAI (2026)
Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO Z39.96): an XML vocabulary for describing the textual content and metadata of scholarly journal articles, comprising tag sets for archival (Green), publishing (Blue), and authoring (Pumpkin) use cases.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

OAI-PMH - CASRAI (2026)
Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting: a low-barrier HTTP/XML protocol that allows a 'data provider' system (typically a repository or CRIS) to expose its metadata records for incremental harvesting by 'service providers' (aggregators, search services, national portals).
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

CRIS interoperability - CASRAI (2026)
The capacity of CRIS systems to exchange data with each other and with adjacent systems (repositories, funders, publishers, aggregators) through shared data models, schemas, protocols, and persistent identifiers — most prominently CERIF, OAI-PMH, the OpenAIRE Guidelines, and PID-based joins.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Affiliation (CRIS) - CASRAI (2026)
In CRIS terminology, a time-bounded relationship between a Person record and an Organization Unit, capturing the role (employee, visitor, honorary, student), start and end dates, employment fraction, and other contextual attributes of the association.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Organization unit - CASRAI (2026)
In CRIS terminology, an entity representing a structural component of a research organisation — a faculty, school, department, institute, centre, lab, or research group — with its own identifier, name, parent and child relationships, type, start and end dates, and links to People, Projects, and Outputs.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Person record (CRIS) - CASRAI (2026)
In CRIS terminology, the entity representing an individual person involved in research — researcher, RA, PhD candidate, or other contributor — with metadata including names (preferred and historical), identifiers (ORCID iD, ISNI, local HR ID), employments, qualifications, and links to outputs, projects, and organisational units.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Project (CRIS) - CASRAI (2026)
In CRIS terminology, an entity representing a discrete research project with a defined scope, time period, participating people and organisations, funding source(s), and intended or actual outputs — typically the central organising entity for activity-level reporting.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Funding entity - CASRAI (2026)
In CRIS terminology, an entity representing a specific award or funding instance — its funder, award number, amount, currency, start and end dates, and the project and people it supports — distinct from the abstract Funder organisation and from the project itself.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Research output (CRIS) - CASRAI (2026)
In CRIS terminology, an entity representing a discrete product of research — a publication, dataset, software release, patent, performance, exhibition, or other recognised output — recorded with its own identifier, type, date, contributors, and relationships to people, organisations, and projects.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Research activity (CRIS) - CASRAI (2026)
In CRIS terminology, an entity representing a research undertaking — typically a project, programme, or organised research effort — with its own start and end dates, participants, funding sources, outputs, and host organisation, around which CRIS data accretes over the activity's lifetime.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Research entity (CRIS) - CASRAI (2026)
A first-class object in a CRIS data model — typically Person, Project, Publication, Organisation Unit, Funding, Equipment, or Activity — that has its own identifier, metadata schema, and relationships to other entities, and that can be managed and reported on independently.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

EOSC - CASRAI (2026)
European Open Science Cloud: an EU-led initiative and emerging federation of research data infrastructures intended to provide European researchers with seamless, cross-border, cross-discipline access to data, services, and computational resources under FAIR and open-science principles.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

OpenAIRE Nexus - CASRAI (2026)
An OpenAIRE-led Horizon-Europe-funded initiative (2021-2024) that bundles OpenAIRE services and tools into a coherent service portfolio for delivery through the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), targeting researchers, content providers, research communities, funders, and policy makers.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

OpenAIRE EXPLORE - CASRAI (2026)
The end-user-facing discovery service of OpenAIRE that allows researchers, funders, and the public to search and browse the OpenAIRE Graph by publications, datasets, software, projects, organisations, and funders.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

OpenAIRE Graph - CASRAI (2026)
An open scholarly knowledge graph maintained by OpenAIRE that aggregates and links publications, datasets, software, projects, organisations, and people harvested from thousands of repositories, journals, and CRIS systems across Europe and globally, with deduplication, enrichment, and link inference applied.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DSpace-CRIS - CASRAI (2026)
An open-source extension of the DSpace repository platform, developed by 4Science and the DSpace community, that adds CRIS-style entity management for researchers, projects, organisational units, journals, and other research-information entities alongside the existing repository content.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

VIVO - CASRAI (2026)
An open-source semantic-web application and ontology developed by the VIVO community (initially at Cornell University, now under DuraSpace/LYRASIS) that publishes information about researchers, departments, publications, grants, and courses as linked open data and as a navigable web interface.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Elements (Symplectic) - CASRAI (2026)
A commercial CRIS product developed by Symplectic (part of Digital Science) that automates the discovery, capture, and management of research outputs and activities for individual researchers and institutional reporting workflows, with strong emphasis on researcher-facing workflows.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Pure - CASRAI (2026)
A commercial CRIS product, originally developed by Atira A/S in Denmark and now owned by Elsevier, used by universities and research organisations to manage publications, projects, people, organisational units, awards, equipment, and external engagement, and to expose this information through a configurable public 'research portal'.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

CERIF - CASRAI (2026)
Common European Research Information Format: an EU-recommended data model and exchange schema for research information, developed and maintained by euroCRIS, that defines core entities (Person, Project, Publication, OrgUnit, Funding, Equipment) and the relationships among them with explicit role-and-time semantics.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

RIM - CASRAI (2026)
Research Information Management: the organisational practice and the supporting systems and processes by which a university or research organisation collects, manages, and uses information about its research activities, encompassing both the technical CRIS layer and the people and policies around it.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

CRIS - CASRAI (2026)
Current Research Information System: an enterprise-class software system that aggregates, stores, and publishes information about a research organisation's activities — its researchers, publications, projects, funding, equipment, collaborations, and outputs — and exposes that information to internal management and external reporting consumers.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Identifier crosswalk - CASRAI (2026)
A mapping or correspondence table between identifiers in different schemes that refer to the same real-world entity, allowing a system holding one scheme's identifier to find the equivalent identifier in another scheme.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DOI tombstone - CASRAI (2026)
A tombstone page served at the resolved URL of a DOI after the underlying resource has been withdrawn, providing withdrawal information and metadata while ensuring the DOI itself continues to resolve.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DOI suffix - CASRAI (2026)
The portion of a DOI after the first forward slash, assigned by the registrant within their issued DOI prefix, identifying the specific object; can contain any Unicode characters with the case-insensitivity rule applied during comparison.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DOI prefix - CASRAI (2026)
The leading portion of a DOI before the first forward slash, of the form 10.NNNN, where 10 is the directory indicator for the DOI system under the Handle System and NNNN is a string assigned by a DOI Registration Agency to a specific registrant.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Tombstone page - CASRAI (2026)
A landing page served at a persistent identifier's resolved URL after the underlying resource has been withdrawn, retracted, or made permanently unavailable, providing metadata describing the former resource, the reason for its absence, and (where applicable) a successor identifier.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Identifier syntax - CASRAI (2026)
The formal grammar that constrains the textual form of identifiers in a given scheme — what character sets, lengths, prefixes, separators, and check digits are allowed — typically expressed as a regular expression or BNF grammar in the scheme's specification.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Identifier scheme - CASRAI (2026)
A named, formally-defined system for constructing, issuing, and resolving identifiers, typically defined by a syntax, an authority structure (who can mint), a metadata schema, and a resolution policy.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PID resolution - CASRAI (2026)
The process by which a persistent identifier is looked up through its scheme's resolution infrastructure and returned either as an HTTP redirect to the current resource location or as metadata about the resource, depending on the request and the scheme's policy.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PID minting - CASRAI (2026)
The act of generating a new persistent identifier in a registered scheme and registering it, with associated metadata, at the appropriate PID provider so that it becomes resolvable and discoverable.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PID metadata - CASRAI (2026)
The descriptive metadata registered with a PID provider at the time of identifier minting, and updated thereafter, that describes the identified entity — its title, creators, dates, types, related identifiers, and so on — and that is exposed by the provider's APIs alongside the identifier itself.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Funder ID - CASRAI (2026)
An identifier from the Crossref Funder Registry (formerly FundRef), a curated, open registry of funder names and identifiers used by publishers to tag deposited works with the funders that supported them.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Curated org record (ROR) - CASRAI (2026)
An entry in the ROR registry that has been reviewed and approved by ROR curators against the published inclusion criteria, carrying a stable ROR ID and metadata including names, types, country, geographic location, parent/child/related/successor/predecessor relationships, and crosswalks.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ROR Curation - CASRAI (2026)
The community-driven process by which the Research Organization Registry receives, reviews, and acts on requests to add new organisations, update existing records, merge duplicates, or split records, governed by a published curation policy and managed by ROR's curation team.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PID graph - CASRAI (2026)
A graph data structure in which persistent identifiers (ORCID iDs, DOIs, ROR IDs, RAiDs, IGSNs, etc.) are nodes and the metadata relationships among them (creator-of, affiliated-with, funded-by, derived-from) are edges, allowing federated queries across multiple PID-provider registries.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PID consortium - CASRAI (2026)
A grouping of PID-provider member organisations, typically at national or regional scale, formed to share infrastructure, contracts, and support around one or more persistent identifier schemes such as DOI, ORCID, or ROR.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PID provider - CASRAI (2026)
An organisation that issues persistent identifiers from one or more PID schemes, operates (or contracts) the resolution infrastructure for those identifiers, and makes long-term commitments about the maintenance of the identifiers and their metadata.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Resolution service - CASRAI (2026)
A networked service that, given a persistent identifier, returns the current location of the named resource (typically by HTTP redirect) or returns its metadata, allowing the identifier itself to remain stable while the resource's location changes.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Persistent URL - CASRAI (2026)
An HTTP(S) URL that an issuing organisation commits to maintain unchanged over time so that links continue to resolve correctly even as the underlying resource is moved, renamed, or migrated between systems.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

w3id.org PURL - CASRAI (2026)
A persistent URL hosted on the w3id.org domain by the W3C Permanent Identifier Community Group, providing a community-maintained redirect under https://w3id.org/<namespace> to ontologies, vocabularies, and standards documents that may move between hosting providers over time.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PURL - CASRAI (2026)
Persistent Uniform Resource Locator, a URL maintained by a PURL service that redirects (typically via HTTP 302) to the current location of the named resource, allowing the persistent URL to remain stable as the underlying resource location changes.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

URN - CASRAI (2026)
Uniform Resource Name (RFC 8141), a URI of the form urn:NID:NSS where NID is a registered Namespace Identifier and NSS is the namespace-specific string, intended to denote a resource persistently and independently of any particular resolution mechanism.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Handle - CASRAI (2026)
An identifier in the CNRI Handle System (RFC 3650-3652), of the form Prefix/Suffix (e.g. 20.500.12345/abcd), resolved by a distributed system of Handle servers that map the identifier to one or more current URLs or other typed data values.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ARK inflection rules - CASRAI (2026)
A convention of the ARK identifier scheme whereby appending a single '?' to an ARK URL yields the object's descriptive metadata and appending '??' yields a 'commitment statement' describing the issuing institution's persistence policy for that ARK.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ARK - CASRAI (2026)
Archival Resource Key, a persistent identifier scheme for information objects of any type, in the form ark:/NAAN/Name[Qualifier], where NAAN is a Name Assigning Authority Number and Name is the local identifier; resolvable through any cooperating ARK resolver.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

UUID - CASRAI (2026)
Universally Unique Identifier (RFC 4122 / ISO/IEC 9834-8), a 128-bit value rendered as 32 hexadecimal digits in 8-4-4-4-12 grouping, generated such that the probability of collision across independent generators is negligible.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

GUID - CASRAI (2026)
A GUID is Microsoft's term for a 128-bit globally unique identifier that is structurally identical to a Variant-2 UUID (RFC 4122); in research-information contexts it is also used loosely for any system-generated opaque identifier that is NOT a registered persistent identifier such as a DOI, ORCID iD, or ROR ID.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

PIDINST - CASRAI (2026)
A persistent identifier for a research instrument, minted under a DataCite DOI or Handle, conforming to the PIDINST metadata schema developed by an RDA Working Group, that enables citation of and provenance back to the instrument that produced data.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

IGSN - CASRAI (2026)
International Geo Sample Number, a globally unique persistent identifier for physical samples (geological, environmental, biological) that supports tracking and citation of the sample through subsequent analyses, publications, and derived data.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

RAiD - CASRAI (2026)
Research Activity Identifier, an ISO-standardised persistent identifier (ISO 23527) for a research project or activity, providing a stable handle around which related people, organisations, outputs, instruments, and funding can be linked over the activity's lifetime.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DataCite consortium - CASRAI (2026)
A national or regional grouping of DataCite member organisations led by a 'Consortium Lead' that holds the master agreement with DataCite, allowing member institutions to mint DOIs under a shared fee structure and shared support model.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DataCite DOI - CASRAI (2026)
A DOI registered through DataCite, the DOI Registration Agency that serves research data, software, samples, dissertations, instruments, and other non-article research outputs, accompanied by metadata in the DataCite Metadata Schema.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Crossref DOI - CASRAI (2026)
A DOI registered through Crossref, the DOI Registration Agency for scholarly publications (journals, books, conference proceedings, preprints, peer reviews, grants), accompanied by metadata deposited in Crossref's XML schema.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

DOI - CASRAI (2026)
Digital Object Identifier (ISO 26324), a persistent identifier for an entity (typically a research output) consisting of a prefix assigned to a registrant by a DOI Registration Agency and a suffix assigned by the registrant, resolvable as an HTTPS URI under https://doi.org/.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ISNI - CASRAI (2026)
International Standard Name Identifier (ISO 27729), a 16-digit identifier for the public identity of a person or organisation involved in the creation, production, management, or distribution of content, administered by the ISNI International Agency.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

GRID - CASRAI (2026)
Global Research Identifier Database: a retired legacy identifier and registry of research organisations originally operated by Digital Science, frozen to new records in 2021 and superseded by ROR, which was seeded from a deduplicated GRID snapshot and carries a crosswalk back to legacy GRID identifiers.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ROR ID - CASRAI (2026)
A persistent identifier for research organisations issued by the Research Organization Registry (ROR), expressed as an HTTPS URI of the form https://ror.org/0xxxxxxxx where the final nine-character path component is a base32-encoded random value with a check digit.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID education - CASRAI (2026)
An affiliation item in an ORCID record asserting that the iD holder undertook formal, degree-granting study at a named organisation, including degree or qualification, department, start and end dates, and the organisation's disambiguated identifier.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID employment - CASRAI (2026)
An affiliation item in an ORCID record asserting that the iD holder is or was employed by a named organisation, with start date, optional end date, department, role title, and the organisation's disambiguated identifier (typically a ROR ID).
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID work assertion - CASRAI (2026)
A claim, recorded in an ORCID record, that a particular research output (journal article, book chapter, dataset, software, etc.) is associated with the iD holder, with metadata fields including title, type, publication year, external identifiers (DOI, ISBN, PMID), and contributor role.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID record permissions - CASRAI (2026)
The three-level visibility setting attached to each item in an ORCID record — public, trusted parties only, or private — which the record holder applies individually to names, employments, works, fundings, and other assertions.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID consortium - CASRAI (2026)
A national or regional grouping of ORCID member organisations that share a single membership agreement and a lead organisation, in order to coordinate ORCID adoption, training, and policy advocacy within a country or region.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID API - CASRAI (2026)
The two-tier REST application programming interface (Public API and Member API) operated by ORCID that allows systems to read public ORCID record data and, with researcher authorisation, to read restricted data or write trusted-party assertions to records.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID record - CASRAI (2026)
The structured profile maintained at orcid.org for an individual ORCID iD, containing assertions about the person's names, employments, educations, funding, works, peer reviews, and service activities, each with a visibility setting and a source attribution.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

ORCID iD - CASRAI (2026)
A 16-digit persistent identifier, expressed as four hyphen-separated blocks (e.g. 0000-0002-1825-0097) and resolvable as an HTTPS URI under https://orcid.org/, that uniquely identifies an individual researcher across publications, datasets, grants, employments, and peer-review activity.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Container image (as output) - CASRAI (2026)
A reproducibility-supporting container image (Docker, Singularity/Apptainer, OCI) packaging a complete computational environment — operating system, dependencies, software, configuration — deposited in a container registry with a persistent identifier and treated as a citable research output.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Workflow (as output) - CASRAI (2026)
A computational workflow — a structured description of a multi-step analysis pipeline, expressed in a workflow language (Nextflow, Snakemake, CWL, WDL) or platform-specific format, with dependencies, parameters, and provenance — deposited in a repository with a persistent identifier as a citable research output.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Model (as output) - CASRAI (2026)
A trained machine-learning model — including its weights, architecture, training metadata, and accompanying model card — deposited in a model repository (Hugging Face, Zenodo) with a persistent identifier, treated as a citable scholarly output independent of any paper that may describe it.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Dataset (as output) - CASRAI (2026)
A research dataset deposited in a FAIR-aligned repository with a persistent identifier (typically a DataCite DOI), metadata, licence, and access conditions, treated as a citable scholarly output in its own right rather than only as supporting material for a paper.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Translation (work) - CASRAI (2026)
A scholarly publication that renders a previously-published work from one natural language into another, with the translator(s) credited and the original work referenced, treated as a distinct research output for purposes of credit, citation, and intellectual contribution.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

White paper - CASRAI (2026)
An authoritative document — published by a government, industry body, or research organisation — that provides analysis and recommendations on a specific issue, typically intended to inform a policy decision, state the issuing body's position, or guide implementation, with a more formal and longer treatment than a policy brief and a policy/decision-maker audience rather than a technical-practitioner one.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Technical report - CASRAI (2026)
A scholarly document published by a research-performing organisation (a laboratory, government agency, or company) reporting technical work in detail — full methods, data, and often extensive appendices — typically not peer-reviewed in the journal sense but vetted internally, bearing an institutional report number for citation, and aimed primarily at a technical-practitioner audience rather than a policy or decision-maker one.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Policy brief - CASRAI (2026)
A short document — typically 2-8 pages — synthesising research evidence for a policy-maker audience, with explicit policy implications or recommendations, structured for accessibility rather than for academic readers, and issued by research institutions, NGOs, or government-aligned bodies.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Discussion paper - CASRAI (2026)
A scholarly document — published by institutions, learned societies, think-tanks, or government bodies — that presents an argued perspective, policy proposal, or position for community deliberation, sometimes formally inviting a structured response, rather than reporting original empirical research findings for the first time.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Working paper - CASRAI (2026)
A scholarly document circulated through an institutional working-paper series (such as NBER, IZA, or CEPR), an academic website, or a repository, presenting research in progress for community feedback prior to — or sometimes instead of — formal peer review and journal publication. The defining feature is dissemination through an established institutional series with its own numbering and identity, distinct from a one-off self-posted draft.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Conference abstract - CASRAI (2026)
A short summary of research findings or planned work submitted to a conference for selection of oral or poster presentation, published in a conference abstract book or supplement, citable as a publication but typically lacking full peer review of the underlying research.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Conference proceeding - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed scholarly publication appearing in the published proceedings of a conference, workshop, or symposium, typically representing original research presented at the meeting, with a citation that includes the conference name, date, and proceedings location.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Null result publication - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed publication reporting that a study's primary analysis returned results statistically consistent with no effect (or, in equivalence/non-inferiority designs, consistent with no clinically meaningful difference), explicitly framed and interpreted as informative about the absence of effect.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Negative result paper - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed publication whose primary finding is that a tested hypothesis was not supported, an intervention did not produce the predicted effect, or an expected relationship was not observed, framed as a contribution to evidence rather than as a failure.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) - CASRAI (2026)
An electronic lab notebook (ELN) is software that replaces the paper laboratory notebook as the primary record of experimental work. An entry qualifies as ELN record-keeping when it is timestamped and attributed at the moment of creation, when edits are versioned rather than overwritten (so a full history remains retrievable), and when the record is structured enough to be searched, exported in a non-proprietary format, and – increasingly – assigned a DOI and deposited as a citable research output.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Living systematic review - CASRAI (2026)
A systematic review that is continuously updated — typically by re-running the registered search, screening newly-identified studies, and incorporating eligible ones into the synthesis — with explicit triggers for major versus minor updates and a publicly maintained version history.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Living review - CASRAI (2026)
A review article — systematic or otherwise — that is continuously or periodically updated as new evidence emerges, maintained as a single citable resource with version history rather than being supplanted by a fresh standalone review on each update.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Narrative review - CASRAI (2026)
A literature review that synthesises existing scholarship on a topic through expert judgement and discursive argument, without using the pre-specified protocols, reproducible search strategies, or formal quality-appraisal frameworks that characterise systematic and scoping reviews. Search is selective and purposive (focused on what the author judges to be the significant work in the field) rather than exhaustive, and the output is typically a conceptual synthesis or argued perspective rather than a protocol-governed answer to a narrowly defined question.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Meta-analysis - CASRAI (2026)
A quantitative synthesis of effect estimates from multiple studies on a common question, using statistical methods (typically random-effects models) to compute a pooled estimate with confidence interval and heterogeneity diagnostics.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Scoping review - CASRAI (2026)
A literature review that maps the breadth and nature of evidence on a broad topic — characterising what exists, where, and in what form — using systematic search methods but without typically appraising study quality or synthesising effect estimates, following PRISMA-ScR.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Systematic review - CASRAI (2026)
A literature review that follows a pre-specified, registered protocol to systematically identify, appraise, and synthesise all evidence relevant to a focused research question, using reproducible methods for searching, screening, data extraction, and quality assessment.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Case report - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed publication describing in detail one or a small number of individual cases — typically clinical, sometimes legal or social — for educational, hypothesis-generating, or rare-presentation-documenting purposes, structured according to discipline-specific reporting standards (e.g., CARE guidelines for clinical cases).
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Brief report - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed publication format for compact original research findings, particularly in clinical and applied fields, with tight word and figure limits, used for results that warrant rapid or focused communication of a single result or small study.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Short communication - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed publication format for compact original research findings, typically with word limits below those of full original articles (2,000-3,000 words) but greater than letters or research letters, used for results meriting publication but not requiring full-article treatment.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Research letter - CASRAI (2026)
A short, peer-reviewed publication presenting original research findings in a compressed format — typically under 1,000 words with limited tables/figures and abbreviated methods — used by a journal as a formally categorised publication type for results that warrant rapid or concise communication rather than a full-length original article.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Letter to editor - CASRAI (2026)
A short scholarly communication submitted to a journal in response to a previously-published article in that journal, raising questions, corrections, alternative interpretations, or additional evidence, typically published with a reply from the original authors.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Commentary - CASRAI (2026)
A short scholarly publication that responds to, contextualises, or critiques other recently-published work or a current development in the field, presenting an argued perspective rather than original empirical findings.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Methods paper - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed publication whose primary subject is a research methodology — a new analytic technique, experimental procedure, instrumentation approach, or computational method — described in sufficient detail for independent reuse by other researchers, sometimes with worked examples or benchmarking against existing techniques. The method itself, not a specific planned study using it, is the paper's contribution.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Protocol paper - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed publication that fully describes the methodology of a planned or ongoing research study (clinical trial, systematic review, cohort study, laboratory protocol) prior to or alongside execution, sufficient to enable replication and to fix the methods against post-hoc revision.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Software paper - CASRAI (2026)
A peer-reviewed scholarly publication whose primary subject is a research software package — describing its functionality, architecture, dependencies, testing, and intended uses — published in a venue that issues this format (JOSS, SoftwareX), accompanying the software release in a citable repository.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Data paper - CASRAI (2026)
A data paper (or data descriptor) is a peer-reviewed publication describing a dataset — its collection methods, structure, and quality — rather than presenting novel scientific analysis or findings from that data, giving citable scholarly credit for the work of producing a reusable dataset.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Replication study - CASRAI (2026)
A replication study is a new study that repeats the design and procedures of a prior study, using an independently collected sample, to test whether the original result recurs.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Stage-2 results paper - CASRAI (2026)
The completed registered report submitted after data collection, containing the results, discussion, and any exploratory (clearly labelled) analyses beyond the pre-registered plan, peer-reviewed only for adherence to the Stage 1 protocol and quality of conclusions — not for the direction of findings.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Stage-1 protocol - CASRAI (2026)
The introduction, methods, and analysis plan submitted as the first of two stages of a registered report, peer-reviewed for theoretical motivation, design adequacy, and analytic appropriateness, and (if accepted) granted in-principle acceptance for publication.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Registered Report - CASRAI (2026)
A publication format in which peer review of a study's rationale, hypotheses, and methodology happens before data collection (or before outcomes are known). If reviewers judge the protocol sound, the journal grants in-principle acceptance (IPA) — a binding editorial commitment to publish the completed study once it is executed as approved, regardless of whether the results are statistically significant or match the original hypotheses.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Version of record (VoR) - CASRAI (2026)
The final, formally published version of a scholarly work as issued by the publisher — including typesetting, pagination, copy-editing, and an assigned bibliographic citation — which is the canonical citable form of the work absent subsequent corrections.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Postprint - CASRAI (2026)
The author-accepted version of a manuscript after peer review and editorial decision of acceptance but before publisher typesetting and final layout — synonymous with 'author-accepted manuscript' (AAM) in many usage contexts.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Preprint - CASRAI (2026)
A scholarly manuscript posted to a public preprint server prior to formal peer review and journal publication, made openly accessible, citable via a persistent identifier (typically a DOI), and bearing a clearly identified version state.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Mentoring agreement - CASRAI (2026)
A mentoring agreement is a short written document, agreed jointly by a mentor and mentee at the start of a formal mentoring relationship, that records the pair's shared expectations: meeting frequency, the goals of the relationship, confidentiality boundaries, and how either party can end the arrangement. It is what turns an informal pairing into a documented one — a relationship without any such record, however regular, is informal mentoring rather than an agreement-governed one.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Sponsorship relationship - CASRAI (2026)
A career-development relationship in which a senior researcher (sponsor) uses their social and political capital actively on behalf of a more junior researcher's career advancement — through nomination, recommendation, public advocacy, or introductions — going beyond the advisory dyad of mentorship.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Two-page narrative - CASRAI (2026)
A two-page narrative is the short, fixed-length format convention used by R4RI and comparable narrative-CV schemes: applicants complete their contribution narrative within a hard length constraint (commonly rendered as roughly two sides of the template, though the operative limit is usually set as a word count by the specific funding opportunity) rather than writing an open-ended CV.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Diversity statement - CASRAI (2026)
A document — typically 1-2 pages — in which a researcher articulates their contributions to and plans for promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in research and teaching, increasingly required in US faculty job applications and some research-funding contexts.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Teaching statement - CASRAI (2026)
A teaching statement is a US academic job-market document, typically 1-2 pages, in which a candidate for a faculty position describes their pedagogical approach: teaching philosophy, methods, and evidence of impact on student learning. It is a companion document to the research statement, addressing teaching rather than research, and some institutions require a separate, related teaching-diversity statement alongside it.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Research statement - CASRAI (2026)
A research statement is a US academic job-market document, typically 1-3 pages, in which a candidate for a faculty or tenure-track position describes their research program: past achievements framed as a coherent intellectual narrative and, critically, a forward-looking agenda for what they plan to investigate next. It is written for a hiring or tenure committee, not for a funder, and is distinct from both a publication list and from funder narrative-CV formats like R4RI.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Personal statement - CASRAI (2026)
A short narrative section within a researcher's CV, biosketch, or grant application, in which the researcher explains – in their own voice – why they are qualified to undertake the proposed work, their career trajectory, and any contextual factors relevant to how the application should be assessed.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Biosketch - CASRAI (2026)
A short, structured biographical document used in US federal research grant applications (most notably NIH and NSF) summarising a researcher's qualifications, positions, contributions, and a curated subset of their outputs, in a tightly page-limited format.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Narrative CV - CASRAI (2026)
A narrative CV is a researcher self-description format built around free-text, qualitative narrative sections (contribution to knowledge, to colleagues, to the wider community) rather than a chronological list of publications, positions, and metrics. It is the general practice/movement in responsible research assessment; specific implementations of it include the UK's R4RI, the Dutch Recognition & Rewards programme's narrative formats, narrative sections within the NIH Biosketch, and the Swiss National Science Foundation's format.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Resume for Researchers (R4RI) - CASRAI (2026)
A structured narrative-CV format developed by the Royal Society (UK) which asks researchers to describe their contributions under four headings: contributions to knowledge generation; contributions to development of individuals; contributions to the wider research community; and contributions to broader society.
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Career interruption - CASRAI (2026)
A near-synonym of career break used by some funders (notably the Royal Society and ERC) to denote a period of reduced or absent research activity due to defined personal circumstances; sometimes also used to include reduced-fraction working (less than full-time) rather than complete absence.
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Career break - CASRAI (2026)
A documented absence from active research work of at least three months' duration arising from parental leave, caring responsibilities, illness, disability, military service, or other personal circumstances, recognised by funders as extending early-career-researcher eligibility windows pro-rata.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Supervisor (doctoral) - CASRAI (2026)
The academic appointed by an institution to guide a doctoral candidate's research, with formal responsibility for the academic quality of supervision, progress monitoring, ethical conduct of the research, and recommendation for examination, in accordance with the institution's doctoral regulations.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Sponsor (career) - CASRAI (2026)
A senior researcher or leader who actively advocates for a more junior researcher's career advancement — nominating them for opportunities, opening doors, vouching for them in evaluations — distinct from a mentor (who advises) by the action of using social and political capital on the mentee's behalf.
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Mentee - CASRAI (2026)
A researcher (typically more junior) who receives career, intellectual, or professional guidance from a mentor in a defined or recognised mentoring relationship, distinct from a supervisee in that the relationship lacks formal evaluative authority.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Mentor - CASRAI (2026)
An experienced researcher who provides career, intellectual, or professional guidance to a less experienced researcher (the mentee), distinct from a formal supervisor in that the mentoring relationship is typically chosen rather than assigned, may cross institutional lines, and does not carry formal evaluative authority.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Co-investigator - CASRAI (2026)
A named investigator on a research grant, contract, or protocol other than the lead PI, who contributes substantive scientific expertise and shares responsibility for portions of the work, typically with a defined role in the proposal and a named budget allocation.
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Principal investigator (PI) - CASRAI (2026)
The named individual on a research grant, contract, or protocol who is formally accountable for the scientific direction, ethical conduct, financial stewardship, and reporting of the research, typically holding a continuing academic or research-leader position at the host institution.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Research associate - CASRAI (2026)
A research associate is a fixed-term, PI-directed contract researcher role, typically held by someone with a completed or near-complete PhD, employed on a specific grant or project rather than in a permanent post. The term is a formal grading category in UK higher education (distinct from, and one grade above, research assistant) and functions in grant administration primarily as a staffing/costing category rather than a strict career-stage label.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Research assistant - CASRAI (2026)
A staff member employed to provide research support — data collection, literature search, analysis, administration — to a research project under the direction of a more senior researcher, typically without independent design authority over the project.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Master’s-level researcher - CASRAI (2026)
A researcher whose highest qualification is a master's degree (MSc, MA, MRes, MPhil, etc.) engaged in research work in a role appropriate to that qualification, distinct from doctoral candidates and from those with bachelor's-only qualifications.
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Pre-doctoral researcher - CASRAI (2026)
A researcher engaged in research work prior to commencing a doctoral programme, typically in roles such as research assistant, lab technician, or research associate at the master's-equivalent level, where the position involves substantive research rather than only support tasks.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Doctoral candidate - CASRAI (2026)
A student enrolled in a doctoral degree programme (PhD, DPhil, EdD, EngD, MD, etc.) who is undertaking original research toward a thesis or equivalent capstone, under the supervision of one or more academic supervisors.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Postdoctoral researcher - CASRAI (2026)
A person who holds a doctoral degree (PhD or equivalent research/clinical doctorate) and is engaged in a temporary, full-time, mentored research or scholarly-training position – commonly one to five years, most often two to four – undertaken specifically to build an independent publication record, grant history, and research skillset before moving into a permanent faculty, industry, or other independent research role. What separates a postdoc from an ordinary staff researcher is this combination: doctorate already in hand, a defined non-permanent term, and an explicit developmental/mentored purpose rather than an open-ended production role.
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Senior researcher - CASRAI (2026)
A researcher at an advanced career stage (typically 15+ years post-PhD) with a sustained record of independent research leadership, mentoring of multiple researchers to independence, substantial competitive funding history, and recognised disciplinary contribution.
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Mid-career researcher - CASRAI (2026)
A mid-career researcher is a career-stage category, used mainly by funders and institutions to scope eligibility for specific grant schemes, denoting a researcher who is no longer eligible for early-career-researcher (ECR) or first-grant schemes but who is not yet in a senior or established-leader category. There is no single field-wide definition of the stage's boundaries; each funder that uses the category sets its own eligibility window, most commonly expressed as a range of years since PhD award.
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Early-career researcher (ECR) - CASRAI (2026)
A researcher within a defined number of years (typically 5-8) of their first doctoral degree, or — for researchers without a doctorate — within an equivalent period of full-time research practice, accounting for career breaks and part-time work.
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Co-corresponding author convention - CASRAI (2026)
The practice of designating two or more authors as jointly corresponding on a published work, each taking responsibility for post-publication communication, editorial liaison, and queries about the work, with all co-corresponding authors typically marked by a symbol in the byline.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Reviewer role typology - CASRAI (2026)
A controlled vocabulary for distinguishing types of peer-review activity — e.g., manuscript peer reviewer, grant reviewer, conference programme committee member, data peer reviewer, software peer reviewer, reproducibility reviewer — used to give differentiated credit for review work.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

“Degree of contribution” qualifier (lead/equal/supporting) - CASRAI (2026)
The optional CRediT modifier that may be applied to any of the 14 CRediT roles to indicate the relative magnitude of a contributor's input: 'lead' (primary responsibility), 'equal' (co-equal with one or more others), or 'supporting' (contributed but did not lead).
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Conceptualization lead vs supporting - CASRAI (2026)
Under the CRediT taxonomy, the distinction between the contributor who led the formulation of the overarching research question, aims, or ideas for a project (Conceptualization: lead) and those who contributed to but did not originate the conceptual framing (Conceptualization: supporting).
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Funding-acquisition lead vs supporting - CASRAI (2026)
Under the CRediT taxonomy, the distinction between the contributor who led the funding acquisition for a research project (typically the named principal investigator on the grant) and contributors who supported but did not lead the proposal (co-investigators, named collaborators).
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0

Methodology consultant - CASRAI (2026)
A specialist who provides substantive advice on research methodology — study design, sampling, instrument selection, analytic strategy, or implementation approach — to a research project on which they are not a primary investigator.
dictionary_term; CASRAI Dictionary v2026.1; CC-BY 4.0