Research-office workflows
For research-office staff
Moving contribution data from publication metadata into funder reports, narrative CVs and researcher profiles — the operational workstreams that sit between the CRIS and the funder.
The pipeline view
From the research office’s vantage point, CRediT is one input into a larger data pipeline that ends in funder reports, REF/KEF submissions in the UK, ARC ERA reporting in Australia, the European Commission’s project reporting, and the assorted institutional dashboards that consume the same data. The CASRAI dictionary supplies the vocabulary; the CRediT taxonomy supplies the contribution layer; the institutional CRIS supplies the aggregation; the research office supplies the report-side workflow that turns aggregated data into the formats the funder asks for.
The CRediT-to-narrative-CV pipeline
The single most useful operational workstream is the pipeline from CRediT-tagged publications to populated narrative-CV modules. UKRI R4RI requires four narrative modules; the “contributions to the generation of knowledge” module benefits directly from CRediT data, because the researcher can write defensible claims (“led methodology on six papers in the period; conducted investigation across the X cohort; wrote original drafts of four reviews”) rather than raw publication counts.
The pipeline runs: publisher deposits CRediT to Crossref (see the publisher scorecard) → CRIS ingests Crossref record and normalises role assignments against the researcher’s ORCID iD → reporting layer aggregates roles across the publication window → research-office report builder surfaces the role distribution to the applicant. The aggregation step is what the research office owns operationally; the CASRAI dictionary terms for contribution metrics provide the vocabulary that makes cross-institution comparisons possible.
NSPM-33 disclosure mapping (US institutions)
US-funded research operates under the National Security Presidential Memorandum-33 (NSPM-33) implementation guidance from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. The NSF disclosure portal, the NIH Other Support form and the DoD’s comparable mechanism all require structured disclosure of current and pending support, foreign components, and in-kind contributions.
The mapping work for the research office is to align the institution’s internal vocabulary (project, grant, sub-award, foreign component, in-kind) with the funder-specific disclosure fields. The CASRAI dictionary includes a research-security domain that provides the controlled vocabulary for this mapping, federated with NSF, NIH and the OSTP guidance. Detailed term-by-term mapping is on the compliance page.
Researcher-profile management
Institutional researcher profiles — whether surfaced through Pure Portal, Symplectic Discovery, VIVO, DSpace-CRIS researcher pages, or a bespoke institutional site — carry an obligation of currency and accuracy. The research office is typically the operational owner of profile-data quality, working with the library on researcher training and with the CRIS team on the underlying data flows.
A profile that surfaces CRediT-derived contribution patterns alongside publication lists, funded projects, datasets (with DataCite DOIs), software releases (with Zenodo or Software Heritage identifiers) and educational outputs is the operational gold standard. The institutional CRediT adoption guide walks through the contribution-aware profile pattern.
Reporting workflows
- UK REF / KEF. The Research Excellence Framework and Knowledge Exchange Framework are supported by the institutional CRIS plus a REF-specific submission workflow. CRediT data is one of the signals that shapes the contribution narrative in the impact case study and environment templates.
- Australian ARC ERA. The Excellence in Research for Australia exercise uses institution-supplied output and project data; CASRAI’s coordination with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) provides the vocabulary alignment.
- European Commission Horizon Europe. Project reporting via the SyGMa portal benefits from CASRAI alignment with the euroCRIS CERIF model.
- NIH RPPR. The Research Performance Progress Report uses NIH-specific narrative fields; CRediT-derived contribution patterns feed the “What individuals have worked on the project?” section.
