One of the issues tackled within VOA3R is the way to represent research entities and stakeholders (such as People, Projects, Institutions and Funding Agencies) using some interoperable and commonly accepted specification or standard. In the context of VOA3R, the partners experimented with an implementation of the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) data model. CERIF was developed in the late 1980s by the European Union and since 2002 care and custody has been handed to the euroCRIS association.

To elaborate on this, a joint meeting of VOA3R with euroCRIS took place in Bologna, Italy, on the 25th of May 2011. The aims of the meeting were twofold. On the one hand, VOA3R partners presented the implementation of EuroCRIS’ CERIF standard in VOA3R for the storage of information about researchers, projects and organizations. And on the other hand, the VOA3R technical team presented their initial design ideas for the exposure of CERIF as linked open data, and how this could be combined with FAO’s recommendations on Linked Open Data for bibliographic information. As a result of the meeting, both groups agreed on initiating a CERIF tak group for Linked Open Data. To further advance in this, the participants agreed to organize a joint meeting in Alcalá de Henares, Spain on July 27th / 28th 2011, hosted by the University of Alcalá.