v2026.1CASRAI Dictionary 714 entries across 20 domains · CC-BY 4.0714 entries · CC-BY 4.0

Dictionary termTrack EStablev2026.2

Project metadata

The structured descriptive data about a research project, including title, abstract, dates, funder, award number, PI, contributors, institutions, scope, keywords, outputs, and identifiers (RAiD, ORCID, ROR, DOI), used for discovery, reporting, and linkage.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
An institutional CRIS holds 30 fields of project metadata for each active grant, exported to funder reports and the public research portal.
Is an instance
A repository ingest links the published dataset's DOI to the project's RAiD using project-metadata cross-references.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A single project title and PI name with no other descriptive data is not a comprehensive project metadata record.
Not an instance
Free-text reports without structured fields are not project metadata.

Editorial commentary

Project metadata enables findability and interoperability across systems (institutional CRIS, funder portals, repositories, public dashboards). Standard fields include title, abstract, start and end dates, funder, programme, award number, total budget, lead institution, partners, PI, contributors with roles (CRediT taxonomy), keywords, classification (FOS or similar), associated outputs, ethics approvals, and identifiers. RAiD provides the anchor identifier, with linkages out to ORCID for people, ROR for organisations, and DOIs for outputs. CASRAI's Common Standard for Researcher Information and other community standards shape the field set.

References

CASRAI Common Standard; CERIF EU current-research-information format.

Also known as

Project metadata record · Project descriptive data · CRIS project record

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="Project metadata"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/project-metadata" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "name": "Project metadata",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/project-metadata",
  "description": "The structured descriptive data about a research project, including title, abstract, dates, funder, award number, PI, contributors, institutions, scope, keywords, outputs, and identifiers (RAiD, ORCID, ROR, DOI), used for discovery, reporting, and linkage.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-lifecycle-stages-and-project-metadata/",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/project-metadata",
  "sameAs": [
    "Project metadata record",
    "Project descriptive data",
    "CRIS project record"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}

Adopted by research universities worldwide

View CASRAI adoption →