Illustrative composites

Institutional adoption case studies

Seven illustrative composite case studies of how research-intensive institutions, libraries, consortia, and clinical-research networks have operationalised CRediT and the CASRAI Dictionary. Every case study on this site is a synthesis of publicly-documented adoption patterns — not attributed to any specific real institution. For the list of actually-registered CASRAI adopters, see /adopt/registered.

Filter by institution type

Pick the cohort closest to yours

Seven case studies covering universities, libraries, consortia, Australian Group of Eight, Canadian Tri-Agency-aligned, Chinese 985, and clinical-research networks. Filter to the cohort that matches your institution.

Research-intensive university

Operationalizing CRediT across a 40,000-author institutional repository

R1 / very-high-research-activity public university · United States

A large multi-college US public university wires CRediT into the Symplectic-Elements-to-DSpace deposit pipeline so that contributor-role metadata flows from author submission through to ORCID, Crossref, and the NIH Public Access Policy compliance workflow — without asking authors to re-enter the same data three times.

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Library / research-information service

How a Russell Group library built a CRediT helpdesk in 4 weeks

Russell Group research-intensive university library · United Kingdom

A UK Russell Group library stands up a CRediT helpdesk service for researchers in four weeks, built around library-led training, the UKRI R4RI narrative-CV pipeline, and Pure-integrated guidance. The service answers the question "what should my CRediT statement look like" without asking the library to become a CRediT-classification arbiter.

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Regional / national consortium

A 5-country EU regional consortium aligning on the CASRAI Dictionary

Regional consortium of 17 universities across 5 EU member states · 5 EU member states (composite — small, medium, and large national systems represented)

A regional EU consortium adopts the CASRAI Dictionary as a shared vocabulary across seventeen universities, five national funding systems, and three languages, so that joint doctoral programmes and shared research infrastructure can report into Horizon Europe with consistent metadata. The Dictionary acts as the lingua franca that lets each university keep its existing CRIS while agreeing on what the underlying terms mean.

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Australian Group of Eight

Group of Eight: CRediT as a tenure-and-promotion signal

Australian Group of Eight (Go8) research-intensive university · Australia

An Australian Group of Eight university integrates CRediT into its academic promotion process so that contribution patterns — not publication counts — become the primary signal in mid-career and senior promotion cases. The change is framed as DORA-aligned reform and explicitly avoids ranking researchers by role count.

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Canadian Tri-Agency-aligned

Aligning Tri-Agency RPP reporting with CRediT and Dictionary

U15 research-intensive Canadian university · Canada

A Canadian U15 university aligns its Research Performance Progress (RPP) reporting workflow for CIHR, NSERC, and SSHRC grants with the CRediT taxonomy and the CASRAI Dictionary, so that contribution-level evidence can be supplied alongside the standard narrative without doubling the reporting burden on PIs. The implementation specifically handles SSHRC's humanities-leaning preference for narrative and CIHR's biomedical preference for structured data.

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Chinese 985 university

A 985 university's bilingual CRediT capture workflow

Chinese 985 / Double First-Class research university · China

A Chinese 985 university builds a bilingual (Simplified Chinese + English) CRediT capture workflow so that contribution metadata is consistent across English-language international publications and Chinese-language domestic publications, with downstream flow into Pure for international reporting and into the Ministry of Education's domestic reporting system.

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Clinical / hospital network

Multi-site clinical-research network using CRediT for surgical-research outputs

Multi-site clinical-research network (academic medical centres + affiliated teaching hospitals) · United Kingdom (composite — NHS trust + academic medical centre partnership)

A multi-site clinical-research network operationalises CRediT specifically for surgical-research outputs — papers where the surgeon-investigator, the trial methodologist, the research nurse, and the data analyst each contributed in clearly distinct ways that traditional authorship orderings obscured. The implementation handles NIHR portfolio reporting, ICMJE authorship requirements, and the network's own contribution-to-promotion mapping.

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Cross-references

Related CASRAI resources

The composite case studies above are designed to be read alongside the publisher-side adoption tracker, the register of actual CASRAI adopters, and the per-institution implementation guidance.

Registered CASRAI adopters

Institutions that have formally registered with CASRAI as adopters of CRediT and/or the Dictionary, under their own institutional identity. The factual counterpart to the illustrative composites above.

Open register →

Publisher adoption tracker

Per-publisher deep dives for 20 publishers — submission system, JATS implementation, sample journals, adoption history. The supply-side view of CRediT adoption that institutional rollouts depend on.

Open tracker →

Implementation hub

CRIS integration notes, library guidance, compliance mapping, training materials, and policy templates. The how-to layer underneath each composite case study.

Open hub →

CRIS integration notes

Vendor-specific implementation notes for Pure, Symplectic Elements, VIVO, DSpace-CRIS, Converis, and Worktribe. Field mappings, dictionary ingestion, and configuration toggles.

Open notes →

Workshop materials

Slide decks, posters, FAQ packs, and train-the-trainer kits referenced in the case studies above. CC-BY 4.0 — adapt to your institutional context.

Open materials →

CASRAI Dictionary

The vocabulary that every case study depends on — 714 entries across 20 research-administration domains, with crosswalks to DataCite, MARC 21, ORCID, and Schema.org.

Open dictionary →

Common questions about the composites

Frequently asked

Are these case studies real institutions?+

No. Every case study on this index is an illustrative composite, synthesized from publicly-documented institutional adoption patterns observed across the research-administration community. No case study attributes specific outcomes, dates, metrics, or quotes to a single real institution. For a list of institutions that have formally registered as CASRAI adopters, see /adopt/registered.

Why composites rather than real named institutions?+

Three reasons. First, adoption work involves sensitive institutional data — staff time, internal politics, named individuals — that most institutions cannot publish in identifiable form. Second, composites let us synthesise patterns observed across many institutions into a single coherent narrative that reflects the typical journey, not a single outlier. Third, the composite framing protects us from misrepresenting any specific institution's journey. For real named adopters, see /adopt/registered.

Where do the patterns in the composites come from?+

From publicly-documented adoption journeys — conference presentations, journal articles in Learned Publishing and similar venues, working-group meeting notes, institutional case-study posts, and the implementation guidance the CASRAI working groups have collected since the 2026 revival. The composite case studies reflect typical patterns; they do not claim to represent every institution's journey.

Can my institution be featured as a real named case study?+

Yes. CASRAI invites institutions, publishers, and infrastructure providers to submit case-study contributions for inclusion under their real institutional identity. The contribution process is documented at /about/governance, and the NISO CRediT Standing Committee reviews substantive contributions before publication. Named studies appear in addition to (not in place of) the composite library.

What is the difference between this page and /adopt/registered?+

This page is illustrative — composites of typical adoption patterns. /adopt/registered is factual — a list of institutions that have formally registered with CASRAI as adopters of CRediT and/or the Dictionary. The two pages serve different purposes: composites help you plan, the register tells you who is actually doing the work.

Submit your story

Want your institution’s real journey published?

CASRAI invites institutions, publishers and infrastructure providers to submit case-study contributions for inclusion in the named-adopter library, under their real institutional identity. We are particularly interested in stories that document where the implementation broke, why, and what was learned. The governance page documents the contribution process and the editorial criteria; the NISO CRediT Standing Committee reviews substantive contributions before publication. Named studies appear in addition to (not in place of) the composite library above.