“And the Winner Is…” ORAP – an Open Master Data Service for Scientific Awards and Prizes – Concepts, Structures and Its Application Using the Example of a University-Wide CRIS

15 pages•Published: October 19, 2026

Sophie Biesenbender, Ulrike Gausmann and Sebastian Herwig

Abstract

Prizes, awards and honours are essential parts of the scientific reputation system and evidence of scientific expertise and success. They are integral components of rankings like the Shanghai Ranking and subject to science studies, research reporting and institutional research information management. In its current release, CERIF considers prizes and awards with a specific entity (cfPrize). Notwithstanding, there is a lack of systematic data and data standards for prizes and prize awardings on the international and national levels which might hamper the systematic integration of such information in Current Research Information Systems – CRIS. In Germany, the Commission for Research Information in Germany that is in charge of maintaining the KDSF standard (formerly known as Kerndatensatz Forschung), the German research information standard and blueprint for research information systems, recently published a new and freely accessible data service: the Open Registry for Awards and Prizes (ORAP) provides curated lists of prizes and awards along with relevant metadata. In this paper, we describe the background and key aspects of this new master data service. Next, we present the current data model for information about prizes and prize awardings at the University of Münster, discuss design rationales and decisions as well as the planned integration of ORAP data in the local CRIS. The paper concludes with a summary of findings and an outlook.

Keyphrases: awards, cfprize, common european research information format (cerif), germany, institutional cris, kerndatensatz forschung (kdsf), open registry for awards and prizes (orap), prizes

In: Pablo de Castro and Joachim Schöpfel (editors). Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems, vol 5, pages 265-279.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/28jC
	https://doi.org/10.29007/sws8

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{CRIS2026:“And_Winner_Is…”_ORAP,
  author    = {Sophie Biesenbender and Ulrike Gausmann and Sebastian Herwig},
  title     = {“And the Winner Is…” ORAP – an Open Master Data Service for Scientific Awards and Prizes – Concepts, Structures and Its Application Using the Example of a University-Wide CRIS},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of 17th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems},
  editor    = {Pablo de Castro and Joachim Schöpfel},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Technology},
  volume    = {5},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2516-2322},
  url       = {/publications/paper/28jC},
  doi       = {10.29007/sws8},
  pages     = {265-279},
  year      = {2026}}

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