OSPP (CASRAI)

Open Science Practice Certification — Professional

LevelProfessionalOSPOSPP (CASRAI)

Lessons

11 modules

Domains

Exam blueprint

Exam items

Per attempt

70%

Pass mark

Fixed, uncurved

Retake wait

Days

What you earn

The credential itself

Pass the examination and CASRAI issues this certificate and the post-nominal OSPP (CASRAI), signed by the Programme Director and verifiable by anyone, permanently, from the code on its face.

CASRAI Certification

Certificate of Professional Competence

This is to certify that

Dr. Amelia R. Hartley

has completed the prescribed programme of study and passed the examination in

Open Science Practice — Professional

and is admitted to the designationOSPP (CASRAI)

Verify atcasrai.org/verify/CASRAI-OSP-2026-OWHTCM

Specimen. Issued as a signed PDF and as a machine-readable Open Badge; the holder and code shown are illustrative.

How it appears on your CV

Certifications

OSPP (CASRAI) — Open Science Practice, Professional

CASRAI·Issued Mar 2026·Credential ID CASRAI-OSP-2026-OWHTCM

casrai.org/verify/CASRAI-OSP-2026-OWHTCM

Every certificate is issued under the signature of Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD, Programme Director of CASRAI Certification, who sets the syllabus, blueprint and pass mark for this credential.

It certifies that its holder passed the CASRAI examination for this course on the date shown, scored against the blueprint and pass mark published on this page — and anyone can confirm it from the verification code, without an account and without contacting us.

About this credential

What it covers

Body of knowledge

Exam blueprint

The exam is assembled to these weights on every attempt. They are published before purchase because a blueprint you cannot see is not a blueprint.

Domains and weights7 domains · 3 scored items
Domain	Weight	Items
Open science: concepts, values and the international policy frameworkP1	11%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Open access routes, versions, licensing and rights retentionP2	15%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Repositories, deposit workflows and self-archivingP3	11%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
The economics of open access and equitable publishingP4	18%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Open research practices: preprints, open peer review, preregistration, open data, materials and OERP5	16%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Funder mandates and institutional compliance operationsP6	19%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Open infrastructure, monitoring, metrics and bibliodiversityP7	10%≈ 1 item	≈ 1
Total	100%	3

Item counts are approximate. Each attempt draws a fresh form to the weights above, so the exact number of items per domain varies between attempts.

Syllabus

11 modules, 11 lessons

Every lesson and every learning outcome is listed. The lesson bodies open on enrolment; nothing else about the course is withheld.

11 modules · 11 lessons

Lesson material opens once you are enrolled. The full syllabus and every learning outcome are shown here so you can judge the coverage before you pay.

Module 1
P1
1 lesson
1. Locked.The open science policy framework and its instrumentsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Map an institution's or a jurisdiction's position against the UNESCO Recommendation's areas of action and identify the gaps.
  - [An] Distinguish, for any open-science expectation, what is legally binding, what is contractually binding through an award, what is institutionally binding, and what is aspiration.
  - [C] Draft the policy-context section of an institutional open-science strategy.
  - [An] Evaluate a policy claim for currency and identify what would have to be re-verified before acting on it.
Module 2
P2
1 lesson
1. Locked.Advanced open access: routes, versions, licensing and rights at policy levelLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Assess a publishing agreement for clauses that defeat an institutional or funder open-access position.
  - [C] Design institutional rights-retention guidance, including the prior licence, the submission-stage statement, and the escalation route when a publisher pushes back.
  - [An] Evaluate the risk profile of a rights-retention approach for the institution and for the individual author, and state honestly where the risk falls.
  - [An] Advise on licence policy across articles, books, data, code and teaching materials, and reconcile the inconsistencies.
Module 3
P3
1 lesson
1. Locked.Repository infrastructure, deposit workflow design and metadataLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [C] Specify an institutional deposit workflow with its points of capture and its failure handling.
  - [An] Choose between mediated and self-deposit models for a given institutional context and justify the trade-off.
  - [An] Evaluate a repository platform's governance, preservation posture and exit options before the institution builds a dependency on it.
  - [An] Diagnose systematic metadata failure across a repository's holdings rather than record by record.
Module 4
P4
1 lesson
1. Locked.The economics of open access I: APCs, waivers and institutional fundsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Decompose a published APC into list price, negotiated price, waiver, discount, membership effect, tax and currency, and state what is actually payable.
  - [C] Design an institutional open-access fund: eligibility, ceilings, priority rules, application process, and the exhaustion policy.
  - [An] Evaluate a waiver scheme against the population it purports to serve and identify who falls through it.
  - [An] Explain the absence of any demonstrable relationship between APC price and publishing cost, and what follows for negotiation.
Module 5
P5
1 lesson
1. Locked.The economics of open access II: transformative agreements, negotiation and exitLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Compare the total institutional cost of a read-and-publish agreement against the subscription-plus-APC spend it replaced, and identify the assumptions that make the comparison misleading.
  - [An] Explain how a transformative agreement can simultaneously raise an institution's open-access rate and raise its total publishing expenditure.
  - [An] Analyse the corresponding-author assumption and its effect on reported compliance.
  - [C] Produce a recommendation to enter, renew or exit an agreement, with the data required and the risks stated.
Module 6
P6
1 lesson
1. Locked.Diamond, Subscribe to Open, and non-market publishingLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Evaluate a diamond journal's or platform's sustainability, naming the specific dependencies that would end it.
  - [An] Assess whether Subscribe to Open is viable for a given title and identify its failure mode.
  - [An] Explain how AmeliCA, Redalyc and SciELO are funded and why "there is no APC" is a statement about who pays rather than about cost.
  - [C] Make the institutional case for investing in diamond infrastructure against the alternative of paying APCs.
Module 7
P7
1 lesson
1. Locked.Preprints, open peer review and institutional preprint policyLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [C] Draft an institutional preprint policy including media handling and the withdrawal procedure.
  - [An] Evaluate a preprint server's screening, versioning and withdrawal posture for institutional recommendation.
  - [An] Assess the institutional risk of a preprint-driven media or policy incident and design the response before it happens.
  - [An] Compare open peer review models and advise a society journal considering a change.
Module 8
P8
1 lesson
1. Locked.Preregistration, open data, materials and OER as institutional servicesLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [C] Design institutional support for preregistration and Registered Reports, including what the institution can and cannot usefully do.
  - [An] Audit a sample of the institution's data and code availability statements and quantify how many are actionable.
  - [C] Design an institutional OER programme including licensing guidance and the remix-compatibility problem.
  - [An] Advise on the boundary between open materials and legitimately restricted materials.
Module 9
P9
1 lesson
1. Locked.Funder mandate compliance operations, monitoring and reportingLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Determine, for a portfolio of outputs, which obligations apply and where the institution is exposed.
  - [C] Write or revise an institutional open-science policy and reconcile it with the institution's research-assessment criteria.
  - [C] Report institutional open-access performance with its limitations attached, and defend the number.
  - [An] Track a policy change and revise institutional guidance without over- or under-reading it.
Module 10
P10
1 lesson
1. Locked.Open infrastructure: governance, sustainability and investmentLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Assess an infrastructure service's governance and sustainability before the institution builds a dependency on it.
  - [An] Interpret an open-access measurement produced by a third-party service and state what it can and cannot support.
  - [C] Make the institutional investment case for open infrastructure against the alternative of free commercial dependency.
Module 11
P11
1 lesson
1. Locked.Equity, bibliodiversity and the global systemLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - [An] Analyse who is excluded by a given open-access arrangement and by what mechanism.
  - [An] Explain the Latin American and African systems in their own terms rather than as deviations from the Anglophone model.
  - [An] Assess a proposal for its effect on bibliodiversity.
  - [C] Advise an institution on an equitable open-access position that its budget can actually sustain.

Assessment

How the exam works

The exam is closed-book and multiple choice. Each attempt draws a fresh form to the domain weights above, so no two attempts are the same paper and no answer key circulates. The pass mark is 70% and is fixed — there is no curve, no quota and no adjustment by cohort.

Scoring is immediate. You are shown your overall result and, for every item, the option you chose, the correct option and the reasoning behind it — whether you passed or not. A failed attempt may be retaken after 90 days. The wait exists so a retake is a second attempt at the material rather than a second attempt at remembering the paper.

Forms are assembled to the blueprint above or not at all: where a domain cannot yet be sampled to that standard, the exam declines to start rather than issue an unbalanced paper. Your material and progress are never affected, and there is no time limit on when you sit.

Passing candidates are issued a certificate with a verification code. Anyone can check that code on our public verification page without an account and without contacting us.

Certifying authority

Signed by Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD

CASRAI’s certification programme is academically and medically directed by Dr. Diana Nieves Castro, MD, Programme Director, who sets the syllabus and blueprint for this credential and signs every certificate issued under it.

CASRAI has maintained the terminology and reporting standards of research administration for over a decade. It assumed leadership of the CRediT contributor-roles taxonomy in 2014 and carried it through to adoption as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022, now in use by publishers, funders and institutions worldwide. This examination is drawn from that body of work.

What the credential certifies: that its holder passed the CASRAI examination for this course on the date shown, scored against the blueprint and pass mark published above — verifiable by anyone, permanently, from the code on its face.

Before you buy

The syllabus, learning outcomes, exam blueprint, pass mark and retake policy on this page are the complete specification of this credential. Everything that determines whether you pass is published here before you pay.

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