Mission · CASRAI 2026
Reduce the administrative burden of research
Give funders, institutions, publishers, and researchers a shared, machine-readable vocabulary — and federate with the bodies who steward the parts of that vocabulary we don't.
The problem
Researchers spend their time re-entering things
Funder reporting forms, institutional CV systems, publisher submission systems, repository deposit forms, compliance disclosures. Each system asks for the same underlying information — contributions, outputs, identifiers, funding sources, dates, organisations — but each defines its fields slightly differently. The friction is a multi-billion-dollar annual drain on the research enterprise, and almost all of it is avoidable.
Define a thing precisely, once, with worked examples and counter-examples — and let everyone reuse the definition. That was the original CASRAI insight from 2006; it remains the mission of the current revival.
What CASRAI does
Five workstreams, one mission
① Develop
The CASRAI Dictionary
A structured, citable, openly licensed vocabulary of ~520 terms (target) across 20 domains. Released twice per year under CC-BY 4.0.
Learn more② Federate
Steward where we own; cross-walk where others do
NISO for CRediT, euroCRIS for CERIF, CODATA for RDM terminology, RDA for working-group output, the PID infrastructure orgs for identifier vocabulary.
Learn more③ Incubate
Net-new vocabulary, then graduation
Where no steward yet owns the space, CASRAI incubates net-new vocabulary and graduates mature items to the appropriate body.
Learn more④ Publish
Editorial guidance
For working researchers, librarians, publishers, and integrators. CRediT statements, AI-disclosure policies, narrative CVs, JATS implementation.
Learn more⑤ Release
Twice-yearly cadence
March and September stable releases under CC-BY 4.0. Versioned, citable, dataset DOIs per release.
Learn moreWhat CASRAI doesn't do
The lines we deliberately don't cross
We don't compete with NISO, euroCRIS, CODATA, or other standards bodies.
We federate. The 2020 stewardship handover is the model.
We don't replace publisher submission systems, CRIS systems, or repositories.
We provide vocabulary they consume.
We don't litigate authorship disputes — the ICMJE does that.
We provide structured contribution metadata that informs such conversations.
We don't sell anything.
The Dictionary is CC-BY 4.0; the GraphQL is free; the API has no metered pricing.
Twenty years of standards
Continuity with the original CASRAI
The original CASRAI consortium (2006–2020) handed off its substantive assets to NISO (CRediT), euroCRIS (Catalogue of Elements), and CODATA (RDM Terminology) before winding down. The 2026 revival is built on top of those preserved assets — we federate with each steward rather than duplicating their work — and adds modern net-new vocabulary across the 20 domains.
