Standards
Dictionary releases
An index of every stable release of the CASRAI Dictionary. v2026.1 is current, released on 17 May 2026. The release cadence is twice-yearly, targeting March and September.
Current release
v2026.1 — released 17 May 2026. This is the inaugural release of the 2026-revival editorial line and ships the preserved 2020 vocabulary (48 Open Access Glossary terms, 10 picklists, 123 object templates) together with the 20-domain dictionary taxonomy. Full release notes are on the dictionary changelog. The release dataset, JSON-LD payloads, and GraphQL schema are available from the download page.
For context on what shipped and why, see the about-the-dictionary page. For the broader release index covering CRediT, the Dictionary, and future sibling vocabularies in one place, see all releases.
Release cadence
CASRAI Dictionary releases follow a twice-yearly cadence:
- Spring release — published in March each year. Editorial cut-off in late January; board sign-off in February.
- Autumn release — published in September each year. Editorial cut-off in late July; board sign-off in August.
v2026.1 ships in May rather than March as a one-time exception to align with the 2026 revival launch. The cadence normalises with v2026.2 in September 2026, then v2027.1 in March 2027, and so on. The cadence rationale is documented on the versioning policy page.
Release shape
Every release publishes the same artefact set, with version-stamped URIs that resolve indefinitely (see the versioning policy):
- The full dictionary corpus as a downloadable bundle (CSV, JSON, JSON-LD, RDF/Turtle)
- The GraphQL schema and a snapshot endpoint pinned to the release
- The changelog, summarising additions, revisions, and any deprecations (see deprecations)
- The release dataset deposited at a persistent identifier for citation (see the citation guide)
- Release notes signed off by the editorial board
Release history
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| v2026.1 | 17 May 2026 | Inaugural 2026-revival release. Preserved 2020 vocabulary plus the 20-domain taxonomy. No deprecations. |
| v2026.2 (planned) | September 2026 | First normal-cadence release. Net-new terms from working-group output in priority domains. |
| v2027.1 (planned) | March 2027 | Spring release. |
Relationship to CRediT releases
The CASRAI Dictionary release line is independent of the CRediT release line. CRediT is stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022; the canonical CRediT roles are mirrored in the CASRAI Dictionary with sameAs pointers to casrai.org/credit and shipped in every Dictionary release. When NISO revises the standard, the next Dictionary release picks up the change with appropriate provenance and a changelog entry. The current standardised version remains Z39.104-2022.
Pre-2020 dictionary history
The original CASRAI Dictionary at dictionary.casrai.org operated from 2014 through the 2020 wind-down and was preserved by euroCRIS as a GitHub repository — see the EuroCRIS/CASRAI-Dictionaries repository. The 2026 line begins a new versioning sequence (vYYYY.N) rather than continuing the historic numbering; the history page covers the continuity framing. Historical dictionary content is preserved in the euroCRIS repository for archival reference and as the substrate for the 2026 dictionary's imported terms.
Citing a release
Each release has a stable citation form (publisher, title, version, year, URL). The citation guide documents the recommended forms for whole-release citations, per-term citations, and per-domain citations. CC-BY 4.0 attribution applies to any reuse.
Subscribing to release announcements
Release announcements are published as items in the news section and as machine-readable entries in the dictionary changelog. Institutions and standards organisations that reference the CASRAI Dictionary in their own guidance can subscribe to receive release notes by email a short period in advance of public release; subscribe via [email protected].
