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v2026.1714 entries · CC-BY 4.0
Dictionary termTrack BStablev2026.2

CRIS interoperability

The capacity of CRIS systems to exchange data with each other and with adjacent systems (repositories, funders, publishers, aggregators) through shared data models, schemas, protocols, and persistent identifiers — most prominently CERIF, OAI-PMH, OpenAIRE Guidelines, and PID-based joins.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board
· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

  • Is an instance

    A Pure deployment exporting CERIF-XML over OAI-PMH for OpenAIRE harvesting.

  • Is an instance

    A national funder's project database joinable to institutional CRIS records via Crossref Funder ID and RAiD.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

  • Not an instance

    Manually pasting data between two CRIS systems is not interoperability.

  • Not an instance

    Two separate CRIS installations that share no schema or protocol are not interoperable.

Editorial commentary

CRIS interoperability is the technical and policy programme of euroCRIS and the COAR/euroCRIS CRIS-IR working group. It has three principal pillars: (1) shared models (CERIF) for what entities and relationships are exchanged; (2) shared protocols (OAI-PMH, ResourceSync, REST APIs) for how the exchange happens; (3) shared identifiers (ORCID, ROR, DOI, RAiD, Funder ID) so the entities being exchanged can be joined unambiguously. The OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers (4.0) operationalise these into a profile.

References

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Also known as

CRIS-IR interoperability

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element
xml
<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="CRIS interoperability"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cris-interoperability" />
Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)
json
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "CRIS interoperability",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cris-interoperability",
  "description": "The capacity of CRIS systems to exchange data with each other and with adjacent systems (repositories, funders, publishers, aggregators) through shared data models, schemas, protocols, and persistent identifiers — most prominently CERIF, OAI-PMH, OpenAIRE Guidelines, and PID-based joins.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-information-systems-and-integration/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/cris-interoperability",
  "sameAs": [
    "CRIS-IR interoperability"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

Adopted by research universities worldwide

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