Monthly editorial digest
The CASRAI Bulletin
One email per month. Dictionary changelog, working-group updates, perspectives, federation news. No tracking pixels, one-click unsubscribe, GDPR-compliant.
Monthly · No spam · CC-BY 4.0
The CASRAI Bulletin
New dictionary entries, working-group updates, federation news, and what is changing in research-administration standards. Sent once per month from [email protected].
What you get
The Bulletin is the only mailing CASRAI sends. It is an editorial digest, not a marketing channel — there is no upsell, no event-promotion cadence, no partner-sponsored content. Each issue is approximately a six-minute read and is structured around four standing sections.
The editor letter frames the month in 200 to 400 words: what changed, what is about to change, what we wanted you to notice that the changelog alone would not surface. The dictionary changelog lists new entries, revised entries, deprecations and rename events, each with a permalink to the term page where you can read the full editorial history. The perspective is a single short essay from a working-group chair, an editorial-board member, or a federation partner — usually 600 to 1,000 words on something the contributor thinks the field is getting wrong, or getting right, or about to face. The federation news covers what NISO, euroCRIS, CODATA and the adjacent standards bodies have published since the previous issue, with light editorial commentary where it helps you decide whether the news matters to your work.
Occasionally — perhaps three times a year — the Bulletin will carry a fifth section flagging a public-comment window on a dictionary release candidate or a federated specification. These windows have hard deadlines and are otherwise easy to miss, so we surface them on the Bulletin’s critical path rather than expecting subscribers to watch the working-group pages.
Privacy posture
Your email address is stored only in the CASRAI WordPress database. It is not exported to a third-party email-service provider, not enriched against a marketing data platform, and not shared with federation partners or sponsors under any circumstance. The full list of subscribers is visible only to the editorial team and the system administrator.
The Bulletin email itself carries no tracking pixels. There is no open-tracking, no per-link click-tracking on the editorial body, and no third-party analytics script in the HTML. Editorial links point directly to casrai.org or to the referenced external resource — never through a redirector. The unsubscribe link at the foot of every issue is unauthenticated and one-click; following it removes your address with no further confirmation step.
Subscription uses double opt-in: when you submit the form, we send a confirmation email containing a signed link. Your address is recorded as active only after you follow that link. If you do not confirm within 24 hours, the pending entry is removed automatically and we do not retain the address. This satisfies the GDPR lawful-basis test for consent and the equivalent provisions of UK GDPR, ePrivacy, and CAN-SPAM. Our retention period after unsubscribe is 30 days (sufficient to honour duplicate-suppression for re-signup attempts), after which the row is purged.
When you might not want this
If you only care about a single domain of the dictionary, the site-wide RSS feed or the per-domain feeds linked from each domain page will be lower-noise than the Bulletin. If you are tracking a specific working group, the working-group page carries its own minute summary feed. The Bulletin is a generalist digest — it is not the right channel for someone who wants only the AI-disclosure changelog.
Frequently asked
Newsletter FAQ
- How often does the Bulletin land?
- Once per month, on the third Wednesday. There is no other CASRAI marketing email — the Bulletin is the only thing subscribers receive on this list. If a release window slips, the Bulletin slips with it; we do not pad to hit a calendar.
- What is actually in each issue?
- A short editor letter (200 to 400 words) framing what changed; the dictionary changelog for the month with permalinks to new and revised terms; one perspective piece from a working-group chair or federation partner; and a federation news section covering NISO, euroCRIS, CODATA, and adjacent activity. Roughly a six-minute read.
- How do you handle my email address?
- Your address is stored in the CASRAI WordPress database, never shared, never sold, never enriched against a third-party profile, and not loaded into a marketing-automation platform. There are no tracking pixels in the email — no open tracking, no click-tracking on the editorial links. The unsubscribe link is unauthenticated and one-click.
- Are you GDPR-compliant?
- Yes. Signup uses double opt-in (you confirm by clicking the link in a verification email before any subscription is recorded as active), the lawful basis is consent, and you can withdraw consent at any time via the unsubscribe link or by writing to [email protected]. The data retention period is the lifetime of your subscription plus 30 days after unsubscribe, then the row is purged.
- Can my institution subscribe a shared mailbox?
- Yes. A shared mailbox (research-office@, library@) is treated the same as a personal address. We ask only that someone at the receiving end has the authority to consent on behalf of the mailbox owner — most institutions consider a research-office or library subscription to be standard professional correspondence.
Other ways to stay current
The site-wide RSS and JSON feeds carry every editorial publication as it happens. The working-group pages publish their own minute summaries. For machine consumers, the GraphQL endpoint exposes the dictionary changelog in structured form.
