Current Research Information System: an enterprise-class software system that aggregates, stores, and publishes information about a research organisation's activities — its researchers, publications, projects, funding, equipment, collaborations, and outputs — and exposes that information to internal management and external reporting consumers.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A university running Pure as its CRIS, exposing a public 'research portal' and feeding the national REF submission.
Is an instance
A research council running VIVO to publish a federated graph of its institute's researchers and projects.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
An institutional repository alone (DSpace, EPrints) is not a CRIS — it stores outputs but not the broader activity graph.
Not an instance
A grants-management database alone is not a CRIS without the publications, people, and outputs layers.

Editorial commentary

A CRIS is the system of record for an institution’s research activity. Typical CRIS functions include: ingesting publication data from Scopus, Web of Science, Crossref, and PubMed; harvesting from institutional repositories via OAI-PMH; receiving award notifications from funder systems; managing researcher CV pages; producing reports for national assessment exercises (REF, ERA, BRA, etc.); and exposing data through public researcher and unit portals. Commercial CRIS products include Pure (Elsevier), Elements (Symplectic, part of Digital Science), Converis (Clarivate); open-source equivalents include VIVO and DSpace-CRIS.

References

euroCRIS, 'What is a CRIS?' (eurocris.org). de Castro P., Shearer K., 'The current state of CRIS systems' (COAR/euroCRIS joint report, 2020).

Also known as

Current Research Information System · Research Information System

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="CRIS"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cris" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cris",
  "name": "CRIS",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cris",
  "description": "Current Research Information System: an enterprise-class software system that aggregates, stores, and publishes information about a research organisation's activities — its researchers, publications, projects, funding, equipment, collaborations, and outputs — and exposes that information to internal management and external reporting consumers.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cris",
  "sameAs": [
    "Current Research Information System",
    "Research Information System"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:20",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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