Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A 5-year ARC Discovery Project recorded as a Project in a CRIS, linked to its PI, CIs, host OrgUnit, ARC Funder ID and award.
- Is an instance
An H2020 collaborative project as a single Project across all consortium partners' CRIS systems.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
An individual publication is an Output, not a Project.
- Not an instance
A research group's standing programme of activity may be modelled as a programme above the Project level.
Editorial commentary
Project in CRIS terminology covers internally and externally funded work alike, and both large multi-institution collaborations and small single-investigator projects. The entity typically holds title, short and full abstract, keywords, project type (basic, applied, infrastructure), discipline tags, start/end dates, status (active, complete, terminated), and links out to People, OrgUnits, Funding entities, and Outputs.
CRIS-internal entity vs. the RAiD identifier layer
It’s worth being precise about which layer is which here. Project (this entry) is the CRIS-internal data entity — how one institution’s own system (CERIF’s Project entity, Pure’s Project content type) models a specific piece of work, scoped to that system. RAiD (ISO 23527) and the resulting Project ID (RAiD-anchored) are the external identifier layer for the same kind of undertaking, purpose-built to solve a problem no single institution’s Project record can: identifying one collaborative project consistently across every partner institution’s own CRIS, every funder’s own system, and the researchers who move between institutions during the project’s life. A single RAiD-identified project may correspond to several distinct, siloed Project records — one per participating institution’s CRIS. See Research activity (CRIS) for more on how that RAiD-anchored framing relates to this entity.
Project vs. Funding entity
A Project may draw on one or more Funding entities, but the two are not interchangeable — a Project can exist unfunded (internally resourced, in scoping, or awaiting an award), and a single Funding/Grant record can, in some models, support activity across more than one Project.
References
- euroCRIS, ‘CERIF Project Model’.
Also known as
CRIS Project entity
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Project (CRIS)"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/project-cris" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/project-cris",
"name": "Project (CRIS)",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/project-cris",
"description": "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.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/project-cris",
"sameAs": [
"CRIS Project entity"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"author": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#editorial-team"
},
"datePublished": "2026-05-21T02:14:59",
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T16:17:06",
"inLanguage": "en-GB",
"isAccessibleForFree": true
}
