Impressive Turnout at CERIF Tutorial and UK Data Surgery in Bath

UKOLN, euroCRIS and JISC were delighted to welcome around 54 people (there were several last minute additions, so the number is approximate) to the CERIF tutorial and UK data surgery held in Bath last week. There was a great spread of participants from universities as well as research councils, CRIS vendors and other research organisations. It was also encouraging that so many people from outside the UK came, mainly as a result of the euroCRIS meetings which took place the next day.

Brigitte Jörg’s in-depth tutorial covered the CERIF data model (eg there are lots of entities but all are described in exactly the same way) and how it is used, including new items in CERIF 1.3. CERIF also has a triple structure, so can link to the semantic web.

The data surgery in the afternoon focused firstly on a synthesis of UK CERIF mapping work, so involved a number of JISC projects, including CERIF in Action, IRIOS (1 and 2) and CERIFy. There was lively discussion on some of the issues to be resolved eg multiple identifiers, person names, titles, vocabularies. The CERIF in Action project is tasked with implementing the resulting model.

Other sessions covered CERIF use in the Research Management and Administration System (RMAS) – institutions will be able to start buying from framework at the end of February; CERIF and research datasets; linked open data; and a taxonomy of research equipment for inclusion in CERIF. A fuller write-up will follow.

Most of the presentations are already on the UKOLN web site. A number of participants used the #cerifbath Twitter hashtag at the event and a record of the tweets has been published on Storify. Twitter users (and, indeed, non Twitter users) at the event may also wish to add their details on the CERIF tutorial and UK data surgery Lanyrd page which will enable you to make links with others with an interest in this area.

Also watch this space for JISC RIM project synthesis posts, coming up soon…