Data Standards and Interoperability
Develop shared language for research administration data so institutions can compare, exchange, and steward information without rebuilding the same translation layers alone.
Community of practice
Build a stronger public commons for research administration.
AI4RA is a community of practice for people who want research administration to become more open, interoperable, trustworthy, and collaborative. We are focused especially on the institutions and professionals who are asked to do increasingly complex work with uneven infrastructure, limited capacity, and too few opportunities to shape the tools they depend on.
People first Practice and stewardship drive the site, with software in service of the field
5 Practice domains organizing shared inquiry, resources, and implementation lessons
Open Governance, code, and institutional dialogue intended to remain inspectable and participatory
3 releases AI4RA UDM, OpenERA, and Vandalizer as shared assets within a larger ecosystem
Why this exists
A field needs more than tools. It needs a place to think together.
Research administration is full of recurring problems that institutions often solve alone: data translation, workflow design, reporting friction, tool fragmentation, and now the pressure to adopt AI without clear norms. AI4RA exists to reduce that isolation by making shared learning, shared language, and shared public goods more visible and more durable.
Responsible AI
Explore where AI can support research administration without obscuring accountability, context, or human judgment.
Operational Design
Document workflows, governance patterns, and implementation lessons grounded in how research administration actually works across institutions with very different capacities.
Governance and Stewardship
Treat public infrastructure as a long-term stewardship problem, not just a release milestone or a grant deliverable.
Implementation and Change
Capture how institutions adapt shared ideas locally so the ecosystem reflects real constraints instead of idealized rollout stories.
Who belongs here
The site should make the field legible to itself.
This is not just a publishing surface for announcements. It should help people see where they fit in the community and what forms of contribution matter, whether they arrive as practitioners, institutional stewards, or technical collaborators.
Research administrators
Bring workflow realities, policy pressures, and the daily knowledge that should shape shared infrastructure.
Institutional leaders
Help articulate what trustworthy, sustainable, and adoptable public infrastructure requires at the organizational level.
Data and systems teams
Translate interoperability goals into technical patterns that fit real institutional constraints.
Open source contributors
Support the ecosystem through code, documentation, testing, governance, and implementation feedback.
Participation
Clear ways to belong and contribute.
The most important job of the homepage is to convert affinity into action. People should be able to identify a next step even if they never touch code, because a community of practice is built as much through shared reflection and governance as through software.
- Join working sessions and community conversations about practice.
- Contribute use cases, field notes, and implementation questions from your institution.
- Review and shape the open source releases before they become fixed assumptions.
- Help define governance, language, and stewardship norms for the ecosystem.
Open source
Software as shared infrastructure, not a detached product showcase.
AI4RA UDM, OpenERA, and Vandalizer belong here because the community is building practical public goods. Each release should be framed in terms of purpose, governance, and contribution, not just features. The point is not to create a product family. The point is to create tools and patterns that the field can inspect, adapt, and help govern.
AI4RA UDM
The shared data model layer for common language, interoperability, and durable exchange across research administration systems.
OpenERA
The open operational platform layer for research administration workflows and interoperable services.
Vandalizer
The AI workflow layer for transparent, governed automation in research administration contexts.
Featured field note
Community feedback is shaping how AI4RA explains Vandalizer and OpenERA.
Research administrators did not ask for generic AI hype. They asked for relief from manual, repetitive, high-stakes work. Our latest field note maps the strongest themes from the AI4RA community's March 2026 feedback to the roles Vandalizer and OpenERA can play in building governed, practical workflow support.
Latest writing
A living community needs durable public thinking.
Why Research Administration Needs a Commons
A framing essay for why the field needs shared public goods, not just isolated tools.
From Community Pain Points to Product Fit
What the AI4RA community asked for in March 2026, and how those needs map to Vandalizer and OpenERA.
Browse the library
Guides, governance materials, event records, and ecosystem framing collected in one place.
What this site should signal
Research administration can build public infrastructure for itself.
The site should feel like a serious professional commons: practical, generous, rigorous, and grounded in the work. That tone matters as much as the software pages because it is what creates the gravity well you described: a place people return to because it helps them think, decide, and build together.