CERIF - Common European Research Information Format:An Introduction

CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) is the model of the research domain. It includes the base entities of Publication, Project, Funding, Person, Organization Unit, and many others. Every entity instance can have any number of type or subject classifications. The facts are kept in temporally bound, role-based M:N relationships between entities in the model. Both roles and types are kept in the Semantic Layer that allows for formal syntax and declared semantics. Text attributes can have values in multiple languages. CERIF has been recommended by the European Commission as the standard for building CRISs (Current Research Information Systems). The stewardship of the data model has been entrusted to euroCRIS, the not-for-profit non-government association of research information management professionals