CERIF: Research Information Format

CERIF

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.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 24 Aug 2026

Is CERIF still current?

The last released version is CERIF 1.6.1. euroCRIS states on the official CERIF-DataModel repository, in a README updated on 28 May 2026, that “the classic CERIF model is not being further developed” and that work has moved to CERIF 2.0. The published data-model report for CERIF 1.6.1 records it as created 30 June 2014 and last modified 31 December 2014, and the parallel “current development” model report is dated 22 December 2017 with identical dimensions (295 entities, 1,829 attributes, 671 relationships). The successor, CERIF-Core, describes itself as “the experimental Core of CERIF, the result of the CERIF Refactoring Pilot project started in 2021” and states that it “has not been approved as the official standard yet” (repository last updated 8 March 2026). The CERIF-Vocabularies repository has had no commit since 5 November 2020 and the CERIF-RDF repository is archived. Development is therefore ongoing, but on an unratified 2.0 line rather than on the 1.x specification that deployed systems use.

Adoption of the CERIF exchange route is narrow in practice. Queried on 24 August 2026, the OpenAIRE Graph listed 22 data sources typed “CRIS System”, six of them at the “OpenAIRE CRIS v1.1” compatibility level and sixteen “not yet registered” — against 1,556 CRIS deployments listed in euroCRIS’s own Directory of Research Information Systems on the same date. That is a floor rather than a total, since CERIF-compatible sources also appear under other OpenAIRE type codes, and the registry cannot record the current profile at all: OpenAIRE’s compatibility vocabulary holds one CRIS term, openaire-cris_1.1, three years after v1.2.0 shipped. Working endpoints do run the newer profile — the Pure instances at VU Amsterdam and Erasmus University Rotterdam advertise oai_cerif_openaire against the CERIF profile 1.2 schema, and VTT’s Pure endpoint serves live CERIF records in that namespace (checked 24 August 2026). That comparison needs a caveat: OpenAIRE also ingests institutional repositories under a separate set of guidelines, so an institution can be fully represented in OpenAIRE without running a CERIF endpoint.

References

euroCRIS, 'CERIF: The Common European Research Information Format' (eurocris.org/cerif).
Jeffery K., Asserson A., 'CRIS Central Relating Organisations, People, Projects, Publications', Data Science Journal 7, 2008.
euroCRIS, CERIF-DataModel repository README, updated 28 May 2026 (github.com/EuroCRIS/CERIF-DataModel).
euroCRIS, published CERIF 1.6.1 data-model report (eurocris.github.io/CERIF-DataModel).
euroCRIS, CERIF-Core (CERIF Refactoring Pilot) repository README, last updated 8 March 2026 (github.com/EuroCRIS/CERIF-Core).
OpenAIRE, 'Guidelines for CRIS Managers' v1.2.0, released 6 July 2023 (github.com/openaire/guidelines-cris-managers).

Frequently Asked Questions

What does CERIF stand for?

CERIF stands for the Common European Research Information Format, an EU-recommended data model and exchange schema for research information.

What is CERIF used for?

CERIF is used to make research-information systems interoperable. It defines a core set of entities — such as Person, Project, and other base entities — separated from a semantic-layer classification system and a result/equipment layer, so different systems can exchange research information in a shared structure.

How does CERIF represent relationships like “who worked on what”?

CERIF uses ‘linking entities’ rather than simple links between records. A linking entity carries a role and a time period, so a relationship can state, for example, that a Person was Principal Investigator on a Project from a start date to an end date, not just that the two are connected.

What is CERIF-XML?

CERIF-XML is the standard serialisation of the CERIF model — the format CERIF data is encoded in when exchanged between systems. OAI-PMH-based exchange of CERIF-XML is the canonical interoperability pattern for sharing this data between research-information systems.

Is CERIF the same thing as a CRIS?

No. CERIF is the data model and exchange schema itself, while a CRIS (Current Research Information System) is the software system that implements a model like CERIF to manage and exchange research information.

How does CERIF relate to OpenAIRE?

The OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers (latest release v1.2.0, 6 July 2023) profile CERIF specifically so that CRIS systems can export data in a form compatible with OpenAIRE, building on CERIF-XML as the underlying serialisation.

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="CERIF"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cerif" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cerif",
  "name": "CERIF",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cerif",
  "description": "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.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cerif",
  "sameAs": [
    "Common European Research Information Format"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "author": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
  },
  "datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:13:22",
  "dateModified": "2026-08-24T02:20:04",
  "inLanguage": "en-GB",
  "isAccessibleForFree": true
}

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