CLARIN (Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure) is a research infrastructure initiated from the vision that all digital language resources and tools from all over Europe and beyond are accessible through a single sign-on online environment for the support of researchers in the humanities and social sciences.
The CLARIN infrastructure is governed and coordinated by CLARIN , which is a consortium of countries, represented by their ministries. See here for more details on the legal status of European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC) as stated by European Commission.
Organisational Overview
The organisational chart below explains the relations between the different bodies that play a role in CLARIN ERIC:
- The highest decision-taking body in CLARIN ERIC is the General Assembly ( ), consisting of representatives of the ministries or funding agencies of the member countries. It is assisted by an international Scientific Advisory Board ( )
- The day-to-day management is in the hands of the Board of Directors (
) which receives its guidelines from the GA, as well as input from other committees. It reports to the GA
- The Board of Directors consists of the Executive Director and a number of other directors, approved by the General Assembly
- The BoD can create Thematic Committees (called working groups in Article 14 of the statutes) and provide them with terms of reference. These committees help to implement the strategies and they report to the BoD
- In their work, the BoD, the National Coordinators' Forum, the Standing Committee for CLARIN Technical Centres, and the Thematic Committees are supported by the CLARIN Office, based at the Faculty of Humanities of Utrecht University in the Netherlands
- CLARIN’s infrastructure operations are run and financed by the member countries. Each member country is committed to setting up and funding a national CLARIN consortium, which may consist of various types of centres (see the list of the National Consortia). The National Coordinators' Forum (
), consists of the heads of the national consortia, while the Standing Committee for CLARIN Technical Centres (
) consists of the centre directors (or representatives designated by centre directors) of one technical centre per CLARIN member or observer. NCF and SCCTC are the CLARIN ERIC bodies through which the cross-centre and the cross-country collaboration, integration, and interoperability of the infrastructure components are ensured.
- Each national coordinator is responsible for his/her country to follow the GA’s policies and strategies. The NCF and the SCCTC are responsible for ensuring the coordination of the implementation of the GA’s policies and strategies
- Instructions from the GA go through the BoD to the NCF, and the NCF reports to the BoD
- The Standing Committee for CLARIN Technical Centres has responsibility for ensuring consistence, coherence and stability of infrastructure services. It reports to the BoD
- Overall, various committees, as well as recurring workshops and conferences bring together experts from the CLARIN community to discuss and solve problems of common interest. Currently, five Thematic Committees have been established: the Centre Assessment Committee, the Knowledge Infrastructure Committee, the Legal and Ethical Issues Committee, the Standards Committee, and the User Involvement Committee.
The Statutes of CLARIN ERIC describe all governance aspects in full detail.
Annual reports
Annual Report 2019 (download pdf)
Annual Report 2018 (download pdf)
Annual Report 2017 (download pdf)
As of 2017 CLARIN publishes the annual report in flyer form, available online in PDF format. Reports from previous years can be made available on request.