euroCRIS

euroCRIS is the international not-for-profit membership association of research-information professionals and institutions that holds custodianship of the CERIF data model and coordinates community infrastructure (the DRIS directory, the CRIS Conference, membership meetings, working groups) for interoperability among Current Research Information Systems. Something qualifies as "euroCRIS" only if it refers to the organisation itself — its governance, membership, task groups, and services — not the CERIF standard or a CRIS software product it helps make interoperable.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 16 Jul 2026

Worked examples

Is an instance

The European Commission handed custodianship of CERIF to euroCRIS when the association gained legal not-for-profit status in 2002; euroCRIS's CERIF Task Group has developed and versioned the format ever since — an instance of euroCRIS acting as a standards steward, not just a conference host.

Is an instance

euroCRIS's Directory of Research Information Systems (DRIS) is a community-maintained public directory cataloguing CRIS deployments worldwide — an instance of euroCRIS providing shared community infrastructure beyond CERIF stewardship alone.

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance

CERIF (the Common European Research Information Format) is not euroCRIS — it is the data model euroCRIS maintains. Citing "CERIF" as if it were the organisation's name conflates a standard with its steward; see the separate dictionary entry for CERIF.

Not an instance

A CRIS platform such as Pure, VIVO, or DSpace-CRIS is not euroCRIS — these are institutional software systems that may exchange data using CERIF. euroCRIS does not develop, sell, or operate any specific CRIS product.

euroCRIS grew out of informal meetings among research-information specialists that began in 1991, and took on formal legal status as a not-for-profit membership association in 2002 — the same year the European Commission entrusted it with custodianship of CERIF (the Common European Research Information Format), which the organisation’s CERIF Task Group continues to develop and version today. It is a professional/community body, not a piece of software: institutions and individuals join as members (institutional and personal membership tiers, each carrying voting rights), elect officers, and participate in working groups, rather than licensing a product.

Beyond CERIF stewardship, euroCRIS runs the biennial CRIS Conference and biannual membership meetings, maintains the Directory of Research Information Systems (DRIS) — a public, community-sourced snapshot of CRIS deployments worldwide — and operates an open-access repository of CRIS-related publications. Its remit spans research-information interoperability broadly: identifiers, exchange formats, and controlled vocabularies used to connect CRIS platforms, repositories, and funder/national reporting systems to one another.

euroCRIS is distinct from CERIF, the data model it maintains, and from a CRIS, the class of institutional software system (e.g. Pure, VIVO, DSpace-CRIS) that CERIF helps make interoperable. See the pillar page on persistent identifiers and research information systems for how these pieces fit together.

References

euroCRIS, “What is euroCRIS?” (eurocris.org/what-eurocris)
euroCRIS, “euroCRIS in a Nutshell” (eurocris.org/about/eurocris-nutshell)
euroCRIS, “Membership information” (eurocris.org/membership-information)

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

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

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/eurocris",
  "name": "euroCRIS",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/eurocris",
  "description": "euroCRIS is the international not-for-profit membership association of research-information professionals and institutions that holds custodianship of the CERIF data model and coordinates community infrastructure (the DRIS directory, the CRIS Conference, membership meetings, working groups) for interoperability among Current Research Information Systems. Something qualifies as \"euroCRIS\" only if it refers to the organisation itself — its governance, membership, task groups, and services — not the CERIF standard or a CRIS software product it helps make interoperable.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/eurocris",
  "sameAs": [],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-16T07:40:27",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}