This post continues from the REF Reporting Profile in CERIF (Entities) and elaborates on the employed vocabularies. With CERIF all vocabularies are maintained in the so-called CERIF Semantic Layer, which allows for the maintenance of multiple vocabularies. Within the Semantic Layer, each term belongs to at least one particular vocabulary or so-called classification scheme. A classification scheme defines the range of terms and could in fact – in more technical terms – also be seen as a term’s namespace.

For the REF Reporting Profile, the following vocabularies (classification schemes) have been defined:

• REF Multiple Submission Categories
• REF Organisation Types
• REF Organisation Categories
• REF Action Types
• REF Person Names Scheme
• REF Identifier Types
• REF Staff Categories
• REF Contract Types
• REF Staff Measurements
• REF Staff Circumstance Identifiers
• REF Sensitivity States
• REF Staff Research Groups
• REF Output Categories
• REF Output Types
• REF Output Measurements
• REF Organisation Measurements
• REF Income Source Identifiers
• RER Income Kind Source Identifiers
• REF Impact Statements
• REF Environment Statements
• REF Case Studies
• REF Case Study Categories
• REF Redaction Statuses
• REF Case Study Contacts
• REF Units of Assessment
• Institution’s Research Group Codes
• Institution’s Geographic Boundings
• Institution’s Media Relations
• Institution’s Job Titles

Thus, each classification scheme from this list contains multiple vocabulary terms, e.g. Update, Overwrite, Delete with REF Action Types, or e.g. HESA Staff Identifier, Staff Identifier, Article Number, DOI, Patent Number with REF Identifier Types. The terms and the schemes have been defined following the REF Submission requirements.

The subsequent post will elaborate on the applied REF terms and their application with particular CERIF entities. That is, the context in which they occur following the CERIF model, e.g. Update may be required with a staff record, i.e. concerns a person (cfPers.Pers_Class.), or at an institution (cfOrgUnit.OrgUnit_Class), or with an output (cfResPubl.ResPubl_Class), etc. Another example would be, e.g. the HESA Staff Identifier (a federated identifier) belongs to a person (cfPers.cfFedId.cfFedId), whereas the DOI (a federated identifier) comes with a publication (cfResPubl.cfFedId.cfFedId).

See: REF Reporting Profile in CERIF (Terms)

This post continues from the REF Reporting Profile in CERIF (Intro) and elaborates on the employed CERIF entities for the REF reporting format. Building a profile in CERIF requires at first the identification of the relevant entities and their relationships.

Selected CERIF entities for the REF Reporting Profile

The green squares and lines represent the CERIF REF Reporting Profile. In the formal CERIF model also relationships are entities. They are called link entities, maintain a semantically agnostic name (syntax) and link entities such as e.g. person with organisation (cfPerson_OrganisationUnit) or project (cfPerson_Project). In formal CERIF terms, each entity and each relationship has a defined name, i.e. syntax.

The formal definition of the REF Reporting Profile in CERIF requires an aggregation of the relevant entities to describe the concepts – these are as follows:

• Institution: cfOrgUnit, cfOrgUnit_OrgUnit, cfOrgUnit_Class
• Staff: cfPers, cfPersName, cfPersName_Pers, cfPers_Class, cfPers_OrgUnit, cfPers_ResPubl, cfPers_ResPat, cfPers_ResProd, cfPers_Event
• Outputs: cfResPubl, cfResPubl_Class, cfResPubl_cfResPubl
• Outputs: cfResProd, cfResProd_Class, cfResProd_ResProd, cfResPubl_ResProd
• Outputs: cfResPat, cfResPat_Class, cfResPat_ResPat, cfResPubl_ResPat
• Outputs: cfEvent, cfEvent_Class, cfResPubl_Event
• Environments, Circumstances, Impact, Case Studies: cfMeas, cfMeas_Class, cfSrv_Meas, cfOrgUnit_Meas, cfPers_Meas, cfResPubl_Meas, cfResProd_Meas, cfResPat_Meas
• Submission Contacts: cfEAddr, cfPers_EAddr, cfOrgUnit_PAddr
• Submission Contacts: cfPAddr, cfPers_PAddr, cfOrgUnit_PAddr

• Federated Identifiers: cfFedId
• Employed Vocabularies: cfClass, cfClassScheme

Having selected the profiles’ entities, requires in a next step the employment of vocabularies. The vocabulary terms allow for a meaningful labelling of the link entities, such as: Manager in cfProj_Pers, or cfPers_OrgUnit, or e.g. Author in cfPers_ResPubl.

See: REF Reporting Profile in CERIF (Vocab)

This is to inform, there is a REF Reporting Profile available in CERIF-XML which is being prepared for its addition to the REF submission system during the first half of 2013. The REF submission system will be opened for institution’s to start preparing their submissions to the REF 2014 from late January 2013.

A multitude of ongoing related activities in the UK are in need of clarity over concepts and definitions (see also results from the CiA workshop) that allow for a meaningful and formal description of its certain concerned aspects within the Research ecosystem. These are often concerned with Research information and data exchange and to achieve interoperability. This contribution introduces the concepts applied with reporting to the REF – hence the REF Reporting Profile and explains how these REF reporting concepts have been formally described in CERIF-XML. The idea is to introduce the different employed modules stepwise and in the end aggregate them within one new post.

The REF requires reporting of information on behalf of institutions. One institution may have multiple submissions to different REF panels or so-called Units of Assessment. The REF reporting concepts are:

• institution
• group
• staff
• circumstances
• outputs
• environments
• income
• impact
• case studies
• submission contacts

The Research Excellence Framework (REF) is the new system for assessing the quality of research in UK higher education institutions (HEIs). It will replace the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and will be completed in 2014. UK Universities are currently very busy preparing their data for the January submission in different formats (e.g. xml, xsd, accdb, mdb).

On behalf of Jisc, this contribution resulted from a collaboration between Gareth Edwards (HEFCE) and Brigitte Jörg (UKOLN, euroCRIS). The former is very familiar with the REF submission system, conceps and requirements, and has been involved in multiple previous RAE submissions. The latter has been leading the CERIF task group at euroCRIS for many years, and recently joined UKOLN in the role of the CERIF National Coordinator with the Jisc Innovation Support Center, and was involved in various related UK projects such as R4R and MICE.

See: REF Reporting Profile in CERIF (Entities)