Because good research needs good data

You are here

Home » Guidance » Metadata » Disciplinary Metadata

CERIF - Common European Research Information Format

CERIF (Common European Research Information Format) is the standard that the EU recommends to its member states for recording information about research activity. Since version 1.6 it has included specific support for recording metadata for datasets.

It is developed and maintained by EuroCRIS. The current version is 1.5, but the version 1.6 model has been available for testing and review since 24 July 2013.

Sponsor

European University Information System
Specification

http://www.eurocris.org/Uploads/Web%20pages/CERIF-1.6/documentation/MInfo.html
Standard's website
https://eurocris.org/services/main-features-cerif

Extensions

OpenAIRE Guidelines for publication repositories, data archives and CRIS systems

The OpenAIRE Guidelines are a suite of application profiles designed to allow research institutions to make their scholarly outputs visible through the OpenAIRE infrastructure. The profiles are based on established standards and designed to be used in conjunction with the OAI-PMH metadata harvesting protocol:

  • The OpenAIRE Guidelines for Literature Repositories are based on Dublin Core;
  • The OpenAIRE Guidelines for Data Archives are based on the DataCite Metadata Schema;
  • The OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers is based on CERIF.

While the focus of each profile is different, they allow for interlinking and the contextualization of research artefacts.

Tools

Converis

Current research information system implementing the CERIF standard. Originally developed by Avedas but now a product of Thomson Reuters.

OpenAIRE Validator

This service validates OAI-PMH metadata records against the OpenAIRE Guidelines for publication repositories, data archives and current research information systems.

Pure

Current research information system developed by Elsevier that implements the CERIF standard.

Symplectic Elements

Current research information system implementing the CERIF standard.

Use Cases

OpenAIRE

A European Scholarly Communication Infrastructure that aggregates bibliographic metadata from a network of publication repositories, data archives and CRIS following the OpenAIRE Guidelines. Together with additional authoritative information, the objects and their relationships described by the metadata form an information space graph which can be traversed by users and accessed via APIs by other services. The metadata primarily support discovery and monitoring services.