Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
The Person entity in CERIF, with linked entities binding it to OrgUnits (as employee) and Projects (as participant).
- Is an instance
The Publication entity in Pure, with linked Person, OrgUnit, Project, and Funding relationships.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A free-text 'biography' field on a researcher's webpage is not a CRIS entity.
- Not an instance
A standalone PDF document on a desktop is not a CRIS entity.
- Not an instance
A single denormalised spreadsheet row combining a person's name, project title, and grant amount in one cell is not an entity model — it has no independently addressable, relatable objects.
Editorial commentary
CRIS systems are entity-relationship systems by design, in contrast to bibliographic or repository systems where the single ‘item’ dominates. The research-entity model lets a CRIS answer questions such as ‘which Persons in this OrgUnit are PI on Projects funded by Funder X with Publications since 2020’. CERIF formalises this entity layer; each CRIS product implements it with extensions and constraints. Persistent identifiers (ORCID for Person, ROR for OrgUnit, DOI for Publication, RAiD for Project) are increasingly used as the cross-CRIS join keys for these entities.
The core entity types
CERIF’s base entities — and the entities most CRIS products expose — typically include: Person (a researcher or contributor), Organisation Unit (an institution, faculty, department, or lab), Project (a funded or unfunded piece of research work), Publication/Product (the output type; see the dedicated entry below), Funding/Grant, Equipment, Patent, and Event. CERIF’s own structure distinguishes base entities from the link entities that connect them (for example, a Person-OrgUnit link carries its own start/end dates and role, rather than treating “affiliation” as a static attribute of the Person) — which is what lets a CRIS track someone’s affiliation history rather than only their current one.
How this differs from the Research output entity
This entry describes the entity-relationship model in general — the full set of entity types and how they connect. Research output (CRIS) covers one specific entity type in depth: the Publication/output entity, its typology, and how it is harvested from and pushed to external systems (Crossref, Scopus, repositories, national assessment exercises). Read this page for the overall model; read that page if the output/publication layer specifically is what you need.
What this is not
A research entity is not a specific CRIS product’s feature — the model is largely product-agnostic, defined by CERIF and implemented (with variation) across Pure, Elements, DSpace-CRIS, and VIVO alike. It is also not the same as a single repository “item”, which typically has no independent Person, OrgUnit, or Funding entities of its own to relate to.
References
- euroCRIS, ‘CERIF Data Model’ (eurocris.org/cerif).
Also known as
CRIS entity
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
<role vocab="credit"
vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
vocab-term="Research entity (CRIS)"
vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/research-entity-cris" />{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "DefinedTerm",
"@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/research-entity-cris",
"name": "Research entity (CRIS)",
"identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/research-entity-cris",
"description": "A first-class object in a CRIS data model — typically Person, Project, Publication, Organisation Unit, Funding, Equipment, or Activity — that has its own identifier, metadata schema, and relationships to other entities, and that can be managed and reported on independently.",
"inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
"url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/research-entity-cris",
"sameAs": [
"CRIS entity"
],
"license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"publisher": {
"@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
},
"dateModified": "2026-08-22T15:38:07",
"inLanguage": "en"
}
