SPPP (CASRAI)

Scholarly Publishing Practice Certification — Professional

LevelProfessionalSPPSPPP (CASRAI)

Lessons

10 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 SPPP (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

Scholarly Publishing Practice — Professional

and is admitted to the designationSPPP (CASRAI)

Verify atcasrai.org/verify/CASRAI-SPP-2026-HJKLF5

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

SPPP (CASRAI) — Scholarly Publishing Practice, Professional

CASRAI·Issued Mar 2026·Credential ID CASRAI-SPP-2026-HJKLF5

casrai.org/verify/CASRAI-SPP-2026-HJKLF5

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 · 72 scored items
Domain	Weight	Items
The scholarly publishing system: actors, venues and economicsP1	12%≈ 9 items	≈ 9
Editorial workflow: submission, triage and decisionsP2	15%≈ 11 items	≈ 11
Peer review models and their administrationP3	12%≈ 9 items	≈ 9
Production, metadata and the identifier supply chainP4	18%≈ 13 items	≈ 13
Rights, licensing and open accessP5	16%≈ 12 items	≈ 12
Publication ethics and research integrity in publishingP6	17%≈ 12 items	≈ 12
Venue evaluation, indexing and quality assuranceP7	10%≈ 7 items	≈ 7
Total	100%	72

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

10 modules, 10 lessons

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

10 modules · 10 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 publishing economy and business modelsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Model the cost structure of a journal and explain the effect of a change in volume, rejection rate or business model; evaluate a publishing agreement or consortial arrangement and state what it obliges each party to do; advise on launching, transferring, merging or closing a title and the consequences for authors and the record; analyse a portfolio-level integrity failure and identify its structural causes.
Module 2
P2
1 lesson
1. Locked.Editorial governance and journal managementLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Design an editorial governance structure with defined decision authority; draft terms of reference for an editorial board; specify controls for guest-edited content; manage a conflict between editorial judgement and commercial interest; construct an appeals process.
Module 3
P3
1 lesson
1. Locked.Submission, triage and decision-makingLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Design a triage process with explicit criteria and an audit trail; specify which checks run at which stage and the action on failure; adjudicate a decision where editor and reviewers disagree; diagnose a workflow from its own data.
Module 4
P4
1 lesson
1. Locked.Operating peer reviewLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Select and justify a review model for a venue; operate the reviewer lifecycle at scale; manage conflicts and confidentiality including generative-AI policy; diagnose a failing review process from its data and change it.
Module 5
P5
1 lesson
1. Locked.Production, XML/JATS and the metadata supply chainLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Specify metadata quality requirements for a journal or portfolio; audit records against them; diagnose a discovery, indexing or citation-matching failure back to its metadata cause; evaluate a production vendor's output.
Module 6
P6
1 lesson
1. Locked.Identifiers, deposit and the obligations that attachLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Register and correct a DOI and its metadata; state the obligations attaching to registration; design the deposit workflow for a title; resolve an identifier failure.
Module 7
P7
1 lesson
1. Locked.Rights, licensing and rights retentionLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Draft or review a publication agreement clause; identify conflicts between an agreement and an institutional or funder policy; advise definitively on what may be done with a given version; design an institutional rights-retention position.
Module 8
P8
1 lesson
1. Locked.Open-access models and agreementsLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Analyse an open-access business model and state who pays, on what trigger, and what happens if the funding stops; administer a fund or agreement and reconcile eligibility; assess compliance with a funder condition; evaluate a model's equity consequences.
Module 9
P9
1 lesson
1. Locked.Research integrity in publishing and correcting the recordLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Establish which publication-ethics guidance is currently in force and cite it; select and justify the correct instrument to correct the record; run an integrity case from allegation to resolution; recognise paper-mill, image and authorship-manipulation signals; decide when a matter must be referred to the author's institution; defend a decision under legal and reputational challenge.
Module 10
P10
1 lesson
1. Locked.Venue evaluation, indexing and portfolio quality assuranceLocked
  On completion you will be able to
  - Produce a documented, defensible venue assessment; prepare a journal for index evaluation or diagnose a rejection; explain what indexing does and does not signify; advise without relying on a list.

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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