Do I need to accept these terms to read the site?

Reading the public pages doesn't require accepting anything beyond the implicit norms of fair use. The terms govern more active uses — API consumption, term proposals, translations, and any reuse of the Dictionary content under the CC-BY 4.0 licence.

I want to scrape the dictionary into my private system. Is that allowed?

Yes, with two practical conditions. Use the GraphQL endpoint or the JSON / RDF / CSV distributions rather than scraping the HTML — it's faster for both of us. And stay inside the rate limits (60 req/min per IP unauthenticated, 300/min authenticated). The content is CC-BY 4.0; reuse is the explicit default.

I run a CRIS at my institution and want to mirror the dictionary monthly. What do I need to do?

Use the dictionary release dataset (each release is dated, versioned, and citable) rather than scraping live. Cache the JSON or Turtle distribution locally; refresh against the canonical version URL when the next release ships in March or September. No registration is needed. If your traffic exceeds 300 req/min authenticated, email tech@casrai.org and we'll lift the cap.

A term proposal I submitted was changed materially by the editorial board. Did I lose control of my contribution?

You retain copyright in the original submission; the licence you grant is non-exclusive and irrevocable, so the board can publish, modify, and translate it under CC-BY 4.0. Editorial modification is the norm — proposals are starting points for a community review, not finished entries. We attribute substantive contributors per the CRediT vocabulary on the published entry.

Which jurisdiction governs disputes?

England & Wales. The editorial board is internationally distributed but the operating entity is being incorporated under English law in 2026; English courts have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising from the terms.

If the dictionary contains an error that affects my regulatory filing, can I sue CASRAI?

The terms include the standard "no warranty" disclaimer common to open-licence content, so a contract claim for editorial error is unlikely to succeed. But: every entry links to authoritative external sources (NISO, ISO, NIH, FDA, EMA, etc.) and we expect implementers to defer to those for compliance-critical use. Tell us where the error is — accessibility@casrai.org or editorial@casrai.org — and we'll fix it within the next release window or out-of-cycle for safety-critical errors.

Legal

Terms of use

The terms under which you may use the CASRAI website, the Dictionary content, the GraphQL and REST endpoints, and any contributions you submit. We’ve tried to keep them short and reasonable; the content licence (CC-BY 4.0) is the load-bearing part.

These terms govern your use of casrai.org and the services it offers — the Dictionary, CRediT vocabulary, GraphQL endpoint, REST feeds, machine-readable distributions, and editorial publishing. The substantive outputs are licensed CC-BY 4.0; that licence is the load-bearing part of the relationship. These terms cover the bits CC-BY doesn’t speak to: rate limits, contributor licensing, brand use, and the boring-but-necessary disclaimers. For the trademark policy specifically see /legal/trademark; for privacy and data handling see /legal/privacy; for the imprint / responsible-person disclosure see /legal/imprint.

Section 1

Content licensing

The CASRAI Dictionary, the CRediT-adjacent editorial outputs published on this site, the per-release datasets, the JSON-LD / Turtle / JSON / CSV distributions, and any prose authored by the editorial board are licensed Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC-BY 4.0). You can copy, redistribute, adapt, translate, and build upon them — including commercially — so long as you credit CASRAI as the source and indicate any changes.

Three exceptions: (a) the CASRAI name and logo are trademarks, not CC-BY assets — see /legal/trademark; (b) individual photographs of people on the site are licensed individually with attribution as marked; (c) third-party content embedded with permission (e.g., quotations from peer-reviewed papers, partner logos under partnership notices) follows the original source’s licence terms. The CRediT taxonomy specifically is stewarded by NISO under ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 and is also CC-BY 4.0 — cite NISO as the steward; see /credit/standardization.

Section 2

API and machine-readable distributions

We expose the Dictionary through a public GraphQL endpoint at /implement/graphql, REST feeds at /feed.xml and /feed.json, and LLM-targeted bundles at /dictionary/for-llms and /credit/for-llms. Public read access is unauthenticated. Rate limits apply: 60 requests per minute per IP unauthenticated, 300 requests per minute authenticated. The limits are protective of shared infrastructure, not an artificial scarcity — if your institutional or integration workload needs more, email [email protected] and we’ll lift the cap for legitimate use.

Prefer the machine-readable distributions over scraping the HTML pages; they’re quicker for you and cheaper for us, and they let us cache aggressively at the edge. For bulk mirroring (e.g., a CRIS pulling a monthly snapshot), pin to the dated release version URL rather than the live one — see /standards/versioning for the version-pinning pattern.

Section 3

Contributions

By submitting a term proposal at /dictionary/contribute, a translation at /get-involved/translate, a comment during a public-review window at /get-involved/comment, an editorial submission, or any other contribution to CASRAI, you grant CASRAI a perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable, non-exclusive licence to use, modify, publish, translate, and redistribute your contribution under CC-BY 4.0. You retain copyright in the original work; the licence permits us to publish and the community to reuse.

We attribute substantive contributors on the published entry using the CRediT vocabulary — the same vocabulary the site develops. The pattern is documented at /credit/for-authors. If you would prefer your contribution be attributed under a pseudonym, or anonymously, say so when you submit.

Section 4

Disclaimers

The Dictionary, CRediT vocabulary, editorial guidance, and implementation playbooks are provided as is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied. The CASRAI editorial board reviews each release before sign-off and entries link to the authoritative external sources (NISO, ISO, ICMJE, COPE, NIH, FDA, EMA, ROR, ORCID, and others) but errors and omissions are possible.

For life-safety, regulatory, or compliance-critical use — clinical-trial reporting, regulatory submissions, formal grant applications, audit evidence — defer to the authoritative external source linked from the entry, not to our restatement of it. Where you find an error that matters, tell us at [email protected] and we’ll fix it within the next release window, out-of-cycle for safety-critical cases.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, CASRAI is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages arising from use of the site or its content. The CC-BY 4.0 licence itself includes a no-warranty clause; this paragraph restates that clause in plainer terms.

Section 5

Acceptable use

Don’t do the obvious bad things: probe for vulnerabilities outside our published security-response process; attempt to access non-public parts of the editorial CMS; circumvent the rate limits via distributed scraping; impersonate CASRAI editorial staff; or use the GraphQL endpoint as a backbone for malware command-and-control, spam, or denial-of-service against third parties. We reserve the right to block traffic and pursue any other remedies available to us where this happens.

For coordinated security disclosure, email [email protected]; we treat good-faith disclosures favourably and don’t pursue legal action against researchers acting under a clear vulnerability-disclosure policy.

Section 6

Governing law and updates

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and disputes arising from them are subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts. The choice reflects where the operating entity is being incorporated in 2026; the editorial board itself is internationally distributed — see /legal/imprint.

We may update these terms with 30 days’ notice via the editorial newsletter and a prominent banner on this page. Material changes (those that meaningfully shift what you can or cannot do, or that change the licensing posture) trigger a full editorial-board sign-off; cosmetic changes do not. The current revision is dated at the foot of this page.

FAQ

Frequently asked

Do I need to accept these terms to read the site?: Reading the public pages doesn't require accepting anything beyond the implicit norms of fair use. The terms govern more active uses — API consumption, term proposals, translations, and any reuse of the Dictionary content under the CC-BY 4.0 licence.
I want to scrape the dictionary into my private system. Is that allowed?: Yes, with two practical conditions. Use the GraphQL endpoint or the JSON / RDF / CSV distributions rather than scraping the HTML — it's faster for both of us. And stay inside the rate limits (60 req/min per IP unauthenticated, 300/min authenticated). The content is CC-BY 4.0; reuse is the explicit default.
I run a CRIS at my institution and want to mirror the dictionary monthly. What do I need to do?: Use the dictionary release dataset (each release is dated, versioned, and citable) rather than scraping live. Cache the JSON or Turtle distribution locally; refresh against the canonical version URL when the next release ships in March or September. No registration is needed. If your traffic exceeds 300 req/min authenticated, email [email protected] and we'll lift the cap.
A term proposal I submitted was changed materially by the editorial board. Did I lose control of my contribution?: You retain copyright in the original submission; the licence you grant is non-exclusive and irrevocable, so the board can publish, modify, and translate it under CC-BY 4.0. Editorial modification is the norm — proposals are starting points for a community review, not finished entries. We attribute substantive contributors per the CRediT vocabulary on the published entry.
Which jurisdiction governs disputes?: England & Wales. The editorial board is internationally distributed but the operating entity is being incorporated under English law in 2026; English courts have exclusive jurisdiction over disputes arising from the terms.
If the dictionary contains an error that affects my regulatory filing, can I sue CASRAI?: The terms include the standard "no warranty" disclaimer common to open-licence content, so a contract claim for editorial error is unlikely to succeed. But: every entry links to authoritative external sources (NISO, ISO, NIH, FDA, EMA, etc.) and we expect implementers to defer to those for compliance-critical use. Tell us where the error is — [email protected] or [email protected] — and we'll fix it within the next release window or out-of-cycle for safety-critical errors.

Related legal pages

Licensing (CC-BY 4.0) · Privacy · Cookies · Imprint · Trademark · Accessibility · Citation policy

Last reviewed by the CASRAI Editorial Board: May 2026.