Research administration pillar · 6 guides
What is research administration?
Research administration is the professional discipline that supports research from behind the scenes — winning and managing funding, ensuring compliance, and recording and reporting research information. It is also the field CASRAI was founded to serve: the standards that move research information between systems exist to make this work less burdensome.
The research administration lifecycle
Research administration follows research money and activity through four broad stages. Pre-award is everything up to the funding decision: identifying funders, costing and writing proposals, and securing internal approvals. Award is the set-up of a funded project once it is granted. Post-award covers managing the spend, meeting funder terms and handling compliance — ethics, conflict-of-interest and regulatory obligations — through the life of the project. Reporting closes the loop, aggregating outputs, outcomes and finances into the returns that funders, the institution and national assessment exercises require. The recurring theme across all four stages is that the same facts are needed again and again — which is exactly the duplication CASRAI set out to remove.
The role of CRIS, persistent identifiers and CRediT
Modern research administration runs on connected information. A CRIS — current research information system — is the institutional store that links projects, grants, outputs, datasets and people, while research information management is the broader practice of governing that information well. These systems are only as useful as the standards they share: persistent identifiers (ORCID for people, ROR for organisations, DOIs for outputs) make records unambiguous, the CERIF data model gives them a common structure, and CRediT adds machine-readable detail about who contributed what. Together they let one institution’s research information be understood — and reused — across the whole scholarly ecosystem.
Why research administration matters
Research administration is what turns funding into research and research into accountable, reportable results. As funder and regulatory requirements have grown, it has matured from an "accidental profession" into a recognised career with its own software, certifications, professional bodies and conferences. The guides below cover each part of that picture — the systems, the software, the credentials, the careers and the community.
Explore the pillar
Research administration guides
CRIS systems
What is a CRIS (current research information system)?
A CRIS — a current research information system, also called a research information management system — is the institutional database that stores, links and reports an organisation’s research information: its projects, grants, publications, datasets, people and the relationships between them.
Read →Research information management
What is research information management (RIM)?
Research information management (RIM) is the institutional practice of collecting, curating and using metadata about an organisation’s research — its people, projects, funding and outputs — to support reporting, assessment, discovery and strategic decision-making.
Read →Software
What is research administration software?
Research administration software is the family of systems that universities and research organisations use to manage the business of research — from proposal preparation and grants management through compliance, to research information systems that record projects, outputs and impact.
Read →Certification & training
What is research administration certification?
Research administration certification is formal, examined recognition that a research administrator has met a defined standard of professional knowledge — the best-known credentials being the CRA family of certifications, supported by training from bodies such as NCURA, SRAI and ARMA.
Read →Careers & salary
What does a research administrator do, and what does it pay?
Research administration is the profession of supporting research from behind the scenes — managing proposals, grants, compliance and reporting — with career stages from grants assistant through to research-office director, and salaries that rise with seniority, specialism and region.
Read →Conferences & community
What are the main research administration conferences and communities?
The research administration community gathers through the meetings and membership of its professional bodies — NCURA, SRAI, ARMA and, for research-information specialists, euroCRIS — where administrators share practice, develop skills and shape the standards the field relies on.
Read →Common questions
Research administration FAQ
What is research administration?+
Research administration is the professional discipline of supporting research at an institution — helping researchers find and win funding, managing grants and finances, ensuring ethical and regulatory compliance, and recording and reporting research activity. It is the behind-the-scenes work that lets researchers focus on the research itself.
What does the research administration lifecycle cover?+
It follows a research grant through four broad stages: pre-award (finding funding and preparing proposals), award (setting up the funded project), post-award (managing spend, compliance and the project), and reporting (returning results and outputs to funders and the institution).
What is the difference between research administration and a CRIS?+
Research administration is the discipline and the people; a CRIS — current research information system — is one of the systems they use, the institutional store of research information about projects, grants, outputs and people. A CRIS supports research administration but is not the whole of it.
Is research administration a good career?+
It is a recognised and growing profession with defined career stages — from grants assistant through to director of research services — its own certifications such as the CRA, and active professional bodies (NCURA, SRAI, ARMA). Many people enter laterally from finance or academic-administration roles.
How does research administration relate to CASRAI standards?+
CASRAI — the Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration Information — was founded to reduce administrative burden by giving research administration shared, machine-readable definitions. Its outputs, CRediT and the Catalogue of Elements (now stewarded by euroCRIS), are part of the standards layer that lets research-administration systems exchange information.
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.
