Explainer · Plain-language

What is a CRIS (Current Research Information System)?

A Current Research Information System (CRIS) is an information system used by universities, research institutes, and funders to collect, manage, and report on the research activity of an organisation. A CRIS brings together data about publications, projects, funding, people, and organisational units into a single, connected database. It supports reporting, assessment, and the public showcasing of research, and increasingly interoperates with repositories, ORCID, and other parts of the scholarly infrastructure.

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The step most authors miss

Doing CRediT right? Don’t stop at the statement.

A CRediT statement credits you inside one paper. The recognition CRediT was built for happens when those roles are tied to you, persistently. Sign in with your ORCID — free — and claim your CRediT contributions on casrai.org, the home of the standard. They become a verified, portable part of your identity, not a line that disappears into one PDF.

Free: claim your contributions, then export a journal-ready CRediT statement, schema.org structured data, JATS XML, CSV or BibTeX — and preview your public profile. A membership publishes that profile publicly and verifies the journals you serve.

What a CRIS is and what it holds

A CRIS is the institutional system of record for research activity. Rather than describing a single output in isolation, it models the connected entities of the research enterprise: the publications and other outputs a researcher produces; the projects and programmes that organised the work; the funding and grants that paid for it; the people who carried it out; and the organisations, departments, and groups they belong to. Because it links these entities, a CRIS can answer questions a simple publication list cannot — for example, which outputs resulted from a particular grant, or how a department's research relates to specific funders. This relational structure is what distinguishes a CRIS from a repository, which is primarily concerned with holding and disseminating the outputs themselves.

The CERIF standard and euroCRIS

CERIF — the Common European Research Information Format — is the data model and standard designed specifically to represent research information in a CRIS. It defines the core entities (such as person, organisation, project, and result) and, crucially, the rich set of relationships between them, including the roles and time periods that apply to each link. CERIF is developed and maintained by euroCRIS, a not-for-profit international membership organisation that brings together CRIS practitioners, vendors, and researchers. Adopting CERIF helps institutions exchange research information consistently and supports interoperability between systems, which is one reason it is referenced in national and European research-information infrastructures.

Common CRIS platforms

Institutions can buy a commercial CRIS or deploy an open-source one. Among the widely used commercial systems are Pure (from Elsevier), Converis (from Clarivate), and Symplectic Elements (from Digital Science). Worktribe is a research-management platform used by a number of UK institutions, and DSpace-CRIS is an open-source option built on the DSpace repository platform. These systems differ in how they gather data — some emphasise automated harvesting from external sources, others structured deposit by researchers — and in their reporting, repository integration, and assessment-support features. Many UK institutions use a CRIS to assemble and manage their submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Interoperability and research information management

A modern CRIS does not stand alone. It typically integrates with the institutional repository so that metadata captured in the CRIS can drive the deposit and open-access workflow for full texts. It also connects to persistent-identifier infrastructure: ORCID iDs to unambiguously identify researchers and pull in their works, and ROR (Research Organization Registry) identifiers to identify institutions. The broader discipline of planning, collecting, and using this information is called research information management (RIM). RIM encompasses the policies, workflows, and people — not just the software — needed to keep an institution's research record accurate, connected, and useful for reporting, assessment, and showcasing.

Key facts

At a glance

Definition: System recording an institution's research outputs, projects, funding, people and organisations
Standard: CERIF (Common European Research Information Format), maintained by euroCRIS
Entities: Outputs, projects, funding/grants, people, organisations and their relationships
Platforms: Pure (Elsevier), Converis (Clarivate), Symplectic Elements, DSpace-CRIS, Worktribe
Integrations: Institutional repositories, ORCID iDs, ROR identifiers
Practice: Running and using a CRIS is part of research information management (RIM)

Common misconceptions

What people often get wrong

Often heard: A CRIS and an institutional repository are the same thing.

Actually: No — a repository holds and disseminates the actual outputs (full texts, datasets), while a CRIS manages structured metadata about research activity and the relationships between outputs, projects, funding, people, and organisations. The two are usually integrated but serve different purposes.

Often heard: A CRIS is only useful for compliance reporting.

Actually: No — although a CRIS supports reporting and assessment (such as the REF), it also underpins public researcher and institutional profiles, helps connect outputs to grants and collaborators, and provides management information for strategy, not just compliance.

Often heard: CERIF is just another name for a CRIS.

Actually: No — CERIF is the data standard for representing research information; a CRIS is the system that manages it. A CRIS may or may not be CERIF-compliant, but CERIF is the model designed to make CRIS data interoperable.

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