In CRIS terminology, the entity representing an individual person involved in research — researcher, RA, PhD candidate, or other contributor — with metadata including names (preferred and historical), identifiers (ORCID iD, ISNI, local HR ID), employments, qualifications, and links to outputs, projects, and organisational units.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A Person record carrying preferred name, ORCID iD, current OrgUnit, list of past employments, and links to all outputs claimed by the researcher.
Is an instance
A Person record with a name-change history reflecting marriage, transliteration, or transition.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A row in an HR payroll table is not a Person record in the CRIS sense — it lacks the research-relationship layer.
Not an instance
A LinkedIn profile is not a Person record in a CRIS.

Editorial commentary

The Person record is the join point for everything about a researcher in a CRIS. Carrying an ORCID iD on the Person record is now standard practice and is the key to interoperating with external services. The Person record may carry historical name variants (maiden names, transliterations, name changes) to support disambiguation of legacy outputs. Time-bound relationships (when did this Person belong to that OrgUnit? when were they PI on that Project?) are typically represented through CERIF-style linking entities.

References

euroCRIS, 'CERIF Person Model'.

Also known as

CRIS Person · Researcher record

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Person record (CRIS)"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/person-record-cris" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/person-record-cris",
  "name": "Person record (CRIS)",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/person-record-cris",
  "description": "In CRIS terminology, the entity representing an individual person involved in research — researcher, RA, PhD candidate, or other contributor — with metadata including names (preferred and historical), identifiers (ORCID iD, ISNI, local HR ID), employments, qualifications, and links to outputs, projects, and organisational units.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/person-record-cris",
  "sameAs": [
    "CRIS Person",
    "Researcher record"
  ],
  "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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