Structure
CLARIN is a pan-European community of institutions emerged from an open and bottom-up driven formation process. It is not exclusive and open for extensions. CLARIN is built on
- powerful and committed institutions in Europe that have already exhibited their strengths and that are supported by the national bodies
- the comprehensive expertise that has been developed in the European community over the last decades and that has given it a unique position in international competition and networking
- knowledgable experts that already have created language resources, language technology and small-scale infrastructures
Organizational setup
The following diagram illustrates the structure of CLARIN:
Scientific Board
The Scientific Board consists of high-level scientists, one from each participating country and appointed by the national funding agency. It will monitor the execution of the programme and ensure the overall scientific soundness, coherence, completeness, consistency and feasibility. It determines the overall scientific strategy and reviews the project deliverables.
The chairperson and vice chairperson of the Scientific Board will be:
- Nicoletta Calzolari (CNR-ILC), chair
- Dan Tufis (RACAI), vice chair
Strategic Coordination Board
The Strategic Coordination Board consists of representatives appointed by the funding agencies, one per country. It will monitor the execution of the programme of work with a view to compliance with national governments’ and funding agencies’ policies. It determines the overall governance and financial strategy. The Strategic Coordination Board will review all project deliverables.
The Executive Board reports to the Scientific Board and the Strategic Coordination Board.
Executive Board
The Executive Board consists of 8 experts covering the required expertise and each leading a Work Package or liaising with the humanities. It will take care of all operational issues along the strategic decisions of the Scientific and Strategic Coordination Board.
The members of the Executive Board in the preparatory phase are:
- Steven Krauwer (UU) - coordinator of CLARIN and chairperson of the EB
- Peter Wittenburg (MPG) - WP2 (Technical Infrastructure) and liaising with international partners
- Tamás Váradi (HASRIL) - WP3 (Humanities Projects) and liaising with external projects
- Martin Wynne (OTA) – relation between CLARIN and DARIAH and humanities organizations
- Erhard Hinrichs (UTU) - WP5 (Language Resources and Tools)
- Dan Cristea (UAIC) - WP6 (Dissemination and Education)
- Kimmo Koskenniemi (UHEL) - WP7 (Legal and Ethical Aspects)
- Bente Maegaard (UCPH) - WP8 (Organizational Aspects) and liason between CLARIN and ELRA
Due to the special role of ELRA (European Language Resource Association) for making language resources available and organising the LREC conferences CLARIN wants to document its excellent relation by appointing Bente Maegaard as the ELRA liaison person. To establish the important interaction with DARIAH and the humanities organizations CLARIN established a DARIAH Liaison Officer, Martin Wynne from the Oxford Text Archive, who will also have a sit in the Executive Board.
The International Advisory Board
This will consist of high-ranking international experts, and will give advice to the Executive, Scientific and Strategic Coordination Boards on issues of common interest, such as opportunities for collaboration, coordination and harmonization with initiatives at the international level.
Membership
To become a member an institution has to support the CLARIN mission, has to have a strong national and international position to be able to contribute to the CLARIN mission and has to be represented by an expert who is known for his/her contributions to the field. It is expected therefore that the mission statement will be signed by the director of the institution and that the type of contribution is indicated. The membership is expected to be active.
The CLARIN work is organized in Work Packages along coherent thematic topics. It is obvious that there is overlap between these topics requiring a high degree of interaction between them. Primarily it is the responsibility of the WP leader to organize the work in a way that the goals and deliverables are met.
Working Groups
Within the Work Packages the content oriented work is carried out in a number of working groups. Experts from CLARIN members and from international collaborators are contributing to the working groups. But also associate members and individual experts can be asked to join the working groups.
The annual Members Meeting
In these meetings the Executive Board will present its annual report about progress, problems and planning for the future. All registered member institutions are invited to participate in the meeting and to ask questions, give advice and propose actions. International partners will be invited to participate in the member meetings.
National Groups
While all mentioned bodies act at the European level, every national CLARIN group is expected to define an appropriate national coordination structure.