CASRAI is a community-stewarded standards organisation, founded in 2006, that develops open vocabularies for research administration. Its flagship outputs are the CASRAI Dictionary (1,610 terms across 24 domains) and the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT, ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022), federated with NISO, euroCRIS, CODATA, and RDA — freely reusable under CC-BY 4.0.
Explore the Dictionary, the 14 CRediT contributor roles, our standards & releases programme, or the federation partners that make federated stewardship work.
Research-world adoption
The CRediT taxonomy — now ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, originated by CASRAI — is referenced in guidance published by these research institutions and infrastructure organisations. The pages below link to each institution’s own guidance.
Cambridge
UK
View CASRAI reference
Columbia
US
View CASRAI reference
Crossref
INT
View CASRAI reference
Edinburgh
UK
View CASRAI reference
Harvard
US
View CASRAI reference
Oxford
UK
View CASRAI reference
Princeton
US
View CASRAI reference
Stanford Medicine
US
View CASRAI reference
UCL
UK
View CASRAI reference
ORCID
Global
View CASRAI reference
A non-exhaustive sample. See CRediT adoption worldwide for the full picture.
24 domains
5 tracks
NISO Z39.104
NISO · euroCRIS · …
Est. 2006
4.0 International
What you'll find on this site
The Dictionary is the canonical foundation. Audience hubs translate it into actionable guidance. The editorial layer carries the conversation.
Layer 1 · Foundation
1,610 entries across 24 thematic domains. Stable URIs, structured definitions, picklists, Schema.org DefinedTerm markup. Free to reuse.
v2026.1 · 7 download formats
Learn moreLayer 2 · Hubs
The same standards, translated for the people who use them: authors, institutions, publishers, integrators. Worked examples, templates, FAQs.
4 audience hubs · 7 verticals
Learn moreLayer 3 · Editorial
What's changing in research-administration standards — and how to operate inside that change. Annual reports + monthly bulletin.
State of CRediT 2026 just published
Learn moreBrowse by research cluster
Every guide, comparison, and definition on the site belongs to one of nine research-administration clusters. Each cluster pillar is the hub for its sub-topics and worked guidance.
Contributor roles, authorship criteria and order, integrity and disputes.
DMPs, repositories, FAIR data, metadata standards, and reproducibility.
ORCID, DOI, ROR, research-information systems, and bibliometrics.
Misconduct oversight, research security, export control, and ethics.
Open access, transformative agreements, research assessment, and metadata.
Manuscript conventions, proposal craft, and reviewer-response writing.
The funding lifecycle, agencies and foundations, and award compliance.
University IP, licensing mechanics, spinouts, and startup formation.
Trial operations, regulatory pathways, and billing compliance.
Flagship standard
Fourteen standardised roles for attributing contributions to scholarly research outputs. Originated 2012; CASRAI-stewarded from 2014; formalised as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Used by 50+ publishers across thousands of journals.
Featured this release
A taste of what's inside v2026.1 — pull any entry to see its definition, picklists, related terms, and citation form.
The Kerndatensatz Forschung (KDSF) is Germany's national standard defining how universities and non-university research institutions structure and report information about research activity -- projects, personnel, publications, funding, and infrastructure -- using a shared base data model (Basisdatenmodell), topic-scoped modules, and standardised reference queries (Referenzabfragen). Voluntary adoption was recommended by the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) in January 2016; ongoing governance now sits with the Kommission fur Forschungsinformationen in Deutschland (KFiD).
<p><strong>SocArXiv</strong> is a free, open-access preprint repository for the social sciences. It was founded in 2016 by sociologist Philip N. Cohen in partnership with the nonprofit <a href='/guides/center-for-open-science'>Center for Open Science (COS)</a> and runs on the <a href='/dictionary/term/open-science-framework-osf'>Open Science Framework (OSF)</a> — the same underlying infrastructure that hosts <a href='/dictionary/term/osf-preprints'>OSF Preprints</a> and sibling branded servers such as <a href='/dictionary/term/psyarxiv'>PsyArXiv</a> (psychology) and engrXiv (engineering). SocArXiv launched alongside those two services on December 5, 2016, as part of COS's branded-server model, in which a scholarly community operates its own named, separately moderated preprint service on shared OSF backend infrastructure rather than building hosting from scratch.</p> <p>SocArXiv is not a COS-run editorial operation in the way a journal is. It is governed by a volunteer steering committee of scholars and library professionals under the banner "SocOpen," and since 2021 its institutional home has been the University of Maryland Libraries, which provides the administrative and legal footing for the service as an ongoing academic unit rather than a standalone nonprofit.</p> <h2>Operational definition</h2> <p>A deposit is properly identified as a "SocArXiv preprint" if it meets all of the following:</p> <ul> <li>It was submitted through the SocArXiv service on OSF (osf.io/preprints/socarxiv), not simply cross-listed or mirrored from another repository such as <a href='/guides/arxiv-preprints-what-they-are-and-how-to-use-them'>arXiv</a> or SSRN.</li> <li>It falls within sociology or a closely related social-science field — SocArXiv accepts working papers, preprints, published-paper copies, data, and code across the social sciences broadly, not sociology alone.</li> <li>It has passed SocOpen's moderation screen, which is a scope-and-completeness check, not peer review: moderators confirm the item is scholarly, falls within a supported research area, is plausibly categorized, is correctly attributed to its stated authors, is in a moderated language, and is submitted in a text-searchable format (PDF or DOCX, not a scanned image).</li> <li>It has received an automatically assigned, persistent <a href='/dictionary/term/doi'>DOI</a> on upload, making it citable independent of eventual journal publication; a prior DOI issued by another publisher can also be linked to the same record.</li> <li>It carries one of SocArXiv's permitted reuse terms — CC BY 4.0, CC0 (public-domain dedication), or no license — selected by the author at deposit.</li> </ul> <h2>What SocArXiv is not</h2> <p>Posting to SocArXiv is explicitly not peer review, and a SocArXiv record is not, by itself, evidence that a manuscript has been formally accepted anywhere. Moderation checks scope and completeness, not scientific merit, methodology, or novelty. SocArXiv is also free to authors and readers — there is no submission fee or paywall, which distinguishes it from many venues that require an <a href='/dictionary/term/article-processing-charge'>article processing charge (APC)</a> at the journal stage.</p> <h2>Examples</h2> <ul> <li>A sociologist deposits a working paper analyzing survey data on labor-market outcomes to SocArXiv ahead of submitting it to a peer-reviewed journal, receiving a citable DOI immediately and using that DOI in grant reports and CVs while the manuscript is still under review elsewhere.</li> <li>A research team posts the accepted-but-not-yet-typeset version of a political-science article to SocArXiv under a publisher-permitted embargo, satisfying a funder's open-access mandate without waiting for the journal's own publication date.</li> </ul> <h2>Counter-example</h2> <p>A working paper in economics or sociology posted only to SSRN, a university's own institutional repository, or a personal website is <em>not</em> a "SocArXiv preprint," even though it may cover an identical topic and serve a similar function — the term refers specifically to material submitted through and moderated by the SocArXiv service on OSF, not to social-science preprints in general (for that broader category, see <a href='/dictionary/term/preprint'>preprint</a>).</p> <h2>Related terms</h2> <ul> <li><a href='/dictionary/term/preprint'>Preprint</a></li> <li><a href='/dictionary/term/osf-preprints'>OSF Preprints</a></li> <li><a href='/dictionary/term/psyarxiv'>PsyArXiv</a></li> <li><a href='/dictionary/term/open-science-framework-osf'>Open Science Framework (OSF)</a></li> <li><a href='/dictionary/term/doi'>DOI</a></li> <li><a href='/guides/how-to-choose-a-preprint-server'>How to Choose a Preprint Server</a></li> <li><a href='/guides/preprint-servers-explained'>Preprint Servers Explained</a></li> </ul>
The CTN (Clinical Trial Notification) and CTA (Clinical Trial Approval, formerly called CTX -- Clinical Trial Exemption) schemes are the two regulatory pathways Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) uses to permit the lawful supply of an 'unapproved' therapeutic good -- one not yet entered on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods (ARTG) -- for use in a clinical trial. A trial is a CTN trial if the sponsor self-assesses the product and trial as suitable to proceed on notification alone: the sponsor lodges a CTN with the TGA (via the TGA Business Services online CTN form) after the trial protocol has HREC (Human Research Ethics Committee) approval, pays the CTN fee, and the trial may then start -- the TGA does not review the scientific data before the trial begins. A trial is a CTA trial if the sponsor instead applies for the TGA's formal evaluation and approval of the unapproved good before the trial can start; the TGA reviews the supporting data (quality, safety, and available efficacy information) and must approve the application before recruitment begins. Both schemes sit alongside, not instead of, HREC ethical review and (for CTN trials) the relevant institution's own governance authorisation -- TGA approval or notification concerns lawful supply of the unapproved product, not the ethics of the study design.
TCET (Transitional Coverage for Emerging Technologies) is a CMS coverage pathway, finalized August 2024 (final procedural notice CMS-3421-FN, effective August 12, 2024), that expedites Medicare national coverage for a limited set of FDA-designated Breakthrough Devices by running the device through CMS's existing National Coverage Determination (NCD) and Coverage with Evidence Development (CED) machinery on an accelerated, pre-planned timeline rather than creating a new coverage authority. A device becomes TCET-eligible only if it holds FDA Breakthrough Device designation, has received FDA market authorization, falls within an existing Medicare benefit category, and is not already the subject of an NCD; CMS finalized an exclusion for digital-only technologies and capped the pathway at five new candidates accepted per year, reviewed on a quarterly cycle. A manufacturer engages CMS well before authorization: a non-binding Letter of Intent roughly 18-24 months out, formal self-nomination roughly 12 months out, a CMS-contractor-generated evidence preview identifying gaps in the existing clinical evidence, and a manufacturer-authored Evidence Development Plan (EDP) mapping how those gaps will be closed. If accepted, CMS pursues an NCD conditioned on CED, giving the device national Medicare coverage for several years -- potentially up to roughly five -- while the manufacturer collects the additional outcomes data the evidence preview identified as missing.
A Clinical Trial Notification (CTN, chiken todokede) is the regulatory filing a sponsor must submit to Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (MHLW) -- reviewed on MHLW's behalf by the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) -- before initiating a clinical trial of an unapproved drug, or a new indication/dosage of an approved drug, in Japan. It is Japan's functional counterpart to a U.S. FDA Investigational New Drug (IND) application, but operates as a notification-and-review-window system rather than an affirmative approval: for an initial CTN, PMDA has a 30-day review period after receipt in which it can raise questions or object; if PMDA raises no objection within that window, the sponsor may proceed to start the trial. A submission counts as a CTN when it is filed under Japan's PMD Act (Act on Securing Quality, Efficacy and Safety of Products Including Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices) and includes the trial protocol, investigational product information, and details of the investigators and institutions where the trial will be conducted.
A patent pool is an arrangement among two or more independent patent holders -- which can include a university technology transfer office -- to combine a defined set of patents into a single licensing package administered through one licensor or pool entity, so a licensee can obtain rights to every pooled patent in one transaction, with royalties divided among members by a pre-agreed allocation formula. Distinct from a standard bilateral exclusive or non-exclusive license, which involves a single licensor.
Twenty-four domains · Five tracks
The Dictionary is organised into 24 thematic domains across 5 tracks — from contribution and identifiers to compliance, methods, and assessment reform. Each domain is stewarded by a working group.
The PID ecosystem
Modern research administration runs on persistent identifiers. ORCID for the researcher, ROR for the institution, RAiD (ISO 23527:2022) for the project, DOI for the output, and IGSN / PIDINST for samples and instruments.
Federation, not duplication
CASRAI does not re-derive what NISO, euroCRIS, CODATA, RDA, ORCID, Crossref, DataCite, and ARDC already steward. We federate, cross-walk, and incubate — see our standards & releases catalogue for the full list of normative outputs, and regional hubs for adoption status by country.
Interactive · Free · CC-BY 4.0
No signup. No backend dependency. Everything runs locally in your browser.
Tool · CRediT
Paste authors → tick roles → export plaintext / Markdown / JATS XML with canonical NISO URIs.
Open the tool
Tool · AI disclosure
Pick your target publisher (10 policies built in) → tool used + uses → publisher-aligned disclosure block.
Open the tool
Tool · Citations
Paste a CASRAI URL → get APA, MLA, Chicago, Vancouver, BibTeX, RIS, CSL JSON, JATS XML, or JSON-LD.
Open the tool
Pick your hub
Researchers, institutions, publishers, and integrators get different views of the same dictionary.
For Authors
Get an ORCID iD, write a CRediT statement, structure a narrative CV, navigate AI-disclosure expectations.
Learn moreFor Institutions
Plug the dictionary into your CRIS. Train your research office. Templates for adoption policies.
Learn moreFor Publishers
Adopt CRediT in your submission system. JATS implementation guide. Public implementation scorecard.
Learn moreImplement
GraphQL endpoint. REST API. Model Context Protocol server for AI agents. JATS / JSON-LD encoding.
Learn moreEach hub is its own deep library — visit the author guidance hub, the publisher implementation hub, the institutional guidance hub, or the developer & integrator docs. For background and history, read about CASRAI.
Verified Contributor Directory
A public, ORCID-verified author profile on the domain that stewards CRediT — your roles, your journals, editorially reviewed. Sign in free with ORCID; membership from $150/month.
Twenty years of standards
The major milestones along the way — CASRAI 1.0 in 2006, CRediT becoming an ANSI/NISO standard in 2022, RAiD becoming an ISO standard, and this dictionary release.
How industry should implement CRediT
The taxonomy was written for scholarly articles, but the same pattern applies wherever named experts produce content: attribute a real author, declare their contributor roles, and resolve each role to its canonical CASRAI URI. Here is what that looks like done right outside academia.
LAC Healthcare Solutions, a US medical-supply distributor, is a clean example of the pattern done correctly: every reference article carries a named author, that author’s declared CRediT contributor roles (Conceptualization, Writing, Validation…), and Schema.org markup whose roleName values resolve to the canonical casrai.org/credit role URIs. That is exactly what CRediT is for: a reader — and a search engine — can see who did what, and verify it against the standard.
It is the blueprint we recommend to any organisation publishing expert content. Look at how LAC structures its editorial standards and contributor attribution, then use the CRediT hub and our implementation tooling to do the same.
A common vocabulary is the difference between a federated research-information ecosystem and twelve walled gardens that almost-but-not-quite agree. The CASRAI Dictionary is what we point at when we mean the same thing.
News & perspectives
Working-group reports, federation updates, and commentary on what's changing in research-administration standards.
Editorial
UUP members ratified a new five-year SUNY contract on July 27, 2026 with nearly 98% approval — one of the highest margins in the union’s history. The deal (July 2026-July 2031) includes annual raises, new retention awards, and AI-accountability language requiring SUNY courses stay under human direction, with implications for research-office budgeting and AI policy.
Read post →
Editorial
Brown University President Christina H. Paxson announced on August 3, 2026 that she will step down at the end of the 2026-27 academic year, ending a 15-year tenure. Chancellor Brian T. Moynihan confirmed the Corporation will launch a national search for her successor, with the transition effective June 30, 2027.
Read post →
Editorial
AAUP and the ACLU of Texas sued the Texas A&M University System in early August 2026 over a policy restricting faculty teaching on race, gender, and sexual orientation, arguing it is unconstitutionally vague and violates the First Amendment. The case tests how much authority a governing system has over classroom content versus faculty academic freedom.
Read post →
Citable · Downloadable · Federated
Every dictionary entry has a stable URI, Schema.org DefinedTerm markup, and JATS / JSON-LD encoding. The full dataset ships in seven open formats: JSON-LD, JSON, CSV, XLSX, OWL, RDF Turtle, BibTeX.
Organizational management
CASRAI is operated as a charitable program of The Health Initiative, a U.S. 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, and is funded and governed through the organization’s charitable fund. That stewardship is what keeps the CASRAI Dictionary, the CRediT taxonomy work, and the Verified Contributor Directory running as public-good infrastructure rather than a commercial product — membership and program revenue are directed back into maintaining the standards and the directory’s editorial review.
The Health Initiative is a registered, independently rated nonprofit. Its governance, financials, and charitable status are public — you can verify every detail below directly with the charity regulators and rating services.
One email a month · The only mailing we send
A six-minute editorial digest of what actually changed in research-administration standards — and what is about to.
Standards CASRAI builds on, contributes to, and federates with
