Data Model

ECRcentral stores all content as YAML files under data/entries/. Each record is one file. Build scripts read those files and produce JSON artifacts consumed by the frontend. This document covers every field, every entity type, the vocabulary system, the JSON artifact format, and the legacy field conventions.

One-file-per-record approach

Each entry lives at a path like:

data/entries/{type}/{slug}.yaml

For example:

data/entries/fundings/embo-scientific-exchange-grants.yaml
data/entries/funders/embo.yaml
data/entries/travel-grants/gordion-knot-travel-awards.yaml
data/entries/resources/ten-simple-rules-writing-research.yaml

The slug in the filename is the canonical identifier. It is used in page URLs, in cross-references between records, and as the unique key in JSON indexes. Slugs are lowercase, hyphenated, ASCII-only, and must be unique within their type.

Entity types

Type	Directory	Schema file
Funder	`data/entries/funders/`	`data/schema/funder.schema.json`
Funding	`data/entries/fundings/`	`data/schema/funding.schema.json`
Travel Grant	`data/entries/travel-grants/`	`data/schema/travel-grant.schema.json`
Resource	`data/entries/resources/`	`data/schema/resource.schema.json`
Vocabulary	`data/entries/vocab/`	`data/schema/vocab.schema.json`

Shared fields (all types)

These fields appear on every entry type.

Field	Type	Required	Description
`slug`	string	yes	Unique identifier; must match the filename without `.yaml`. URL-safe, lowercase, hyphenated.
`name`	string	yes	Human-readable display name.
`status`	enum	yes	Lifecycle status: `active`, `expired`, `archived`, `draft`. Only `active` entries appear in search results by default.
`review_status`	enum	yes	Editorial review status: `approved`, `pending`, `rejected`. Only `approved` entries are shown to site visitors.
`featured`	boolean	no	When `true`, the entry may appear on the homepage featured section. Default: `false`.
`created_at`	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	no	Date the YAML file was first created.
`updated_at`	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	no	Date the entry was last meaningfully updated.
`notes`	string	no	Internal editorial notes, not shown on the site.

Funder

Funders are organizations that offer funding opportunities or travel grants. They are referenced by slug from funding and travel-grant records.

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
`slug`	string	yes	Unique ID, e.g. `embo`, `wellcome-trust`.
`name`	string	yes	Full official name of the organization.
`short_name`	string	no	Abbreviated name or acronym, e.g. `EMBO`. Shown in compact UI contexts.
`url`	string (URL)	yes	Official website URL.
`description`	string	no	One or two sentence description of the organization.
`country`	string	no	Country where the funder is headquartered. Use English country names.
`region`	string	no	Geographic region: `Europe`, `North America`, `Asia`, `Africa`, `South America`, `Oceania`, `Global`.
`funder_type`	enum	no	Organization type: `government`, `charity`, `foundation`, `university`, `professional-society`, `intergovernmental`, `corporate`, `other`.
`logo_path`	string	no	Relative path to logo file under `apps/web/public/`, e.g. `logos/funders/embo.png`.
`status`	enum	yes	`active`, `archived`.
`review_status`	enum	yes	`approved`, `pending`, `rejected`.
`featured`	boolean	no	Whether to feature on homepage.
`legacy_id`	integer	no	Primary key from the legacy MySQL database. Preserved for traceability.
`legacy_logo_path`	string	no	Original logo path from the legacy system. Used during logo migration.

Example

slug: embo
name: European Molecular Biology Organization
short_name: EMBO
url: https://www.embo.org
description: >
  EMBO is an organization of more than 1,800 leading researchers that promotes
  excellence in life sciences through grants, courses, and scientific exchange programmes.
country: Germany
region: Europe
funder_type: intergovernmental
logo_path: logos/funders/embo.png
status: active
review_status: approved
featured: false
legacy_id: 42
legacy_logo_path: /uploads/funders/embo_logo.png

Funding

Funding opportunities include fellowships, scholarships, research grants, awards, and other financial support for ECRs.

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
`slug`	string	yes	Unique ID, e.g. `embo-scientific-exchange-grants`.
`name`	string	yes	Official name of the funding opportunity.
`url`	string (URL)	yes	Link to the application or official page.
`description`	string	no	Markdown-supported description of the opportunity.
`funders`	array of slug strings	yes	Slugs of funder records that offer this funding. At least one required.
`legacy_funder_name`	string	no	Raw funder name string from legacy import; kept when no funder record exists yet.
`funding_purposes`	array of vocab slugs	no	What the funding is for. Values from `data/entries/vocab/funding-purpose/`.
`career_levels`	array of vocab slugs	no	Who is eligible. Values from `data/entries/vocab/career-level/`.
`subjects`	array of vocab slugs	no	Relevant disciplines. Values from `data/entries/vocab/subject/`.
`applicant_countries`	array of strings	no	Countries from which applicants are eligible. Use `Worldwide` for no restriction.
`host_countries`	array of strings	no	Countries where the funded activity must take place.
`award_amount`	string	no	Free-text description of the award, e.g. `Up to EUR 2,500` or `Stipend of USD 30,000/year`.
`duration`	string	no	Length of the funded period, e.g. `3–12 months`, `1 year`.
`deadline`	string	no	Application deadline description, e.g. `Rolling`, `15 January annually`.
`deadline_date`	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	no	Machine-readable next deadline date for sorting and expiry detection.
`frequency`	string	no	How often the opportunity recurs: `Annual`, `Bi-annual`, `Rolling`, `One-off`.
`membership_required`	boolean	no	Whether membership of the funder organization is required to apply. Default: `false`.
`status`	enum	yes	`active`, `expired`, `archived`, `draft`.
`review_status`	enum	yes	`approved`, `pending`, `rejected`.
`featured`	boolean	no	Feature on homepage.
`created_at`	date	no	Date added to ECRcentral.
`updated_at`	date	no	Date last updated.
`legacy_id`	integer	no	Legacy MySQL primary key.

Example

slug: embo-scientific-exchange-grants
name: EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants
url: https://www.embo.org/funding-awards/scientific-exchange-grants/
description: >
  EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants support short-term visits by scientists to
  collaborate with colleagues at EMBO Member State institutions. Grants cover
  travel and subsistence for visits of up to three months.
funders:
  - embo
funding_purposes:
  - collaboration
  - research
career_levels:
  - phd
  - postdoc
  - junior-faculty
subjects:
  - life-sciences
applicant_countries:
  - Worldwide
host_countries:
  - EMBO Member States
award_amount: Up to EUR 2,500
duration: Up to 3 months
deadline: Rolling
frequency: Rolling
membership_required: false
status: active
review_status: approved
featured: false
created_at: 2024-01-15
updated_at: 2024-03-01
legacy_id: 318

Travel Grant

Travel grants cover costs associated with attending conferences, workshops, research visits, or other scientific travel.

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
`slug`	string	yes	Unique ID, e.g. `gordion-knot-conference-travel-award`.
`name`	string	yes	Official name of the travel grant.
`url`	string (URL)	yes	Link to the application or official page.
`description`	string	no	Markdown-supported description.
`funders`	array of slug strings	yes	Slugs of offering funders.
`legacy_funder_name`	string	no	Raw funder name from legacy import.
`travel_purposes`	array of vocab slugs	no	What type of travel is supported. Values from `data/entries/vocab/travel-purpose/`.
`career_levels`	array of vocab slugs	no	Eligible career stages. Values from `data/entries/vocab/career-level/`.
`subjects`	array of vocab slugs	no	Relevant disciplines.
`applicant_countries`	array of strings	no	Countries of eligible applicants.
`destination_countries`	array of strings	no	Countries where travel must go.
`award_amount`	string	no	Amount or range, e.g. `Up to EUR 1,000`.
`deadline`	string	no	Deadline description.
`deadline_date`	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	no	Machine-readable deadline.
`frequency`	string	no	`Annual`, `Bi-annual`, `Rolling`, `Per event`.
`membership_required`	boolean	no	Whether funder membership is required. Default: `false`.
`status`	enum	yes	`active`, `expired`, `archived`, `draft`.
`review_status`	enum	yes	`approved`, `pending`, `rejected`.
`featured`	boolean	no	Feature on homepage.
`created_at`	date	no
`updated_at`	date	no
`legacy_id`	integer	no

Example

slug: isth-young-investigator-award-travel-grant
name: ISTH Young Investigator Award Travel Grant
url: https://www.isth.org/page/YIA
description: >
  The ISTH Young Investigator Award provides travel support for early career
  researchers to present their work at the ISTH Congress and attend scientific
  sessions in haemostasis and thrombosis.
funders:
  - isth
travel_purposes:
  - conference
career_levels:
  - phd
  - postdoc
subjects:
  - medicine
  - haematology
applicant_countries:
  - Worldwide
award_amount: Up to USD 1,500
deadline: March annually
deadline_date: 2025-03-01
frequency: Annual
membership_required: false
status: active
review_status: approved
featured: false
created_at: 2024-02-10
updated_at: 2024-02-10
legacy_id: 204

Resource

Resources are tools, guides, databases, online courses, or other assets useful to ECRs that are not funding opportunities.

Fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
`slug`	string	yes	Unique ID, e.g. `mit-commkit`.
`name`	string	yes	Name of the resource.
`url`	string (URL)	yes	Where to access the resource.
`description`	string	yes	What the resource is and who it is for.
`source`	string	yes	Publisher, institution, or author name.
`resource_categories`	array of vocab slugs	no	Type of resource. Values from `data/entries/vocab/resource-category/`.
`subjects`	array of vocab slugs	no	Relevant disciplines.
`career_levels`	array of vocab slugs	no	Who the resource targets.
`access`	enum	no	`free`, `subscription`, `registration-required`. Default: `free`.
`language`	string	no	Primary language of the resource. Default: `English`.
`status`	enum	yes	`active`, `archived`, `draft`.
`review_status`	enum	yes	`approved`, `pending`, `rejected`.
`featured`	boolean	no	Feature on homepage.
`created_at`	date	no
`updated_at`	date	no
`legacy_id`	integer	no

Example

slug: mit-commkit
name: MIT CommKit
url: https://mitcommlab.mit.edu/broad/use-the-commkit/
description: >
  A collection of guides on scientific communication produced by MIT's
  Communication Lab. Covers research articles, grant proposals, conference
  abstracts, figures, and oral presentations.
source: MIT Communication Lab
resource_categories:
  - science-communication
  - academic-writing
subjects:
  - all-disciplines
career_levels:
  - phd
  - postdoc
access: free
language: English
status: active
review_status: approved
featured: false
created_at: 2024-01-20
updated_at: 2024-01-20
legacy_id: 91

Vocabulary (Taxonomy)

Vocabularies define the controlled lists used in multi-select fields. They live under data/entries/vocab/{vocab-type}/ as individual YAML files.

Vocabulary types

Vocabulary type	Directory	Used by
`career-level`	`data/entries/vocab/career-level/`	fundings, travel-grants, resources
`funding-purpose`	`data/entries/vocab/funding-purpose/`	fundings
`travel-purpose`	`data/entries/vocab/travel-purpose/`	travel-grants
`resource-category`	`data/entries/vocab/resource-category/`	resources
`subject`	`data/entries/vocab/subject/`	fundings, travel-grants, resources
`funder-type`	`data/entries/vocab/funder-type/`	funders
`region`	`data/entries/vocab/region/`	funders

Vocabulary record fields

Field	Type	Required	Description
`slug`	string	yes	Machine identifier used in entry arrays.
`label`	string	yes	Human-readable display label.
`description`	string	no	Optional clarification of what belongs in this category.
`sort_order`	integer	no	Controls display order in facet lists and checkboxes.
`parent`	string	no	Slug of a parent term (for hierarchical vocabularies).

Standard career-level slugs

Slug	Label
`bachelor`	Bachelor students
`master`	Master students
`phd`	PhD
`postdoc`	Postdoc
`junior-faculty`	Junior Faculty
`senior-faculty`	Senior Faculty
`md`	MD

Standard funding-purpose slugs

Slug	Label
`fellowship`	Fellowship, scholarship or training
`research`	Research
`collaboration`	Collaboration
`publishing`	Publishing and editorial
`equipment`	Equipment
`award`	Award
`feasibility`	Feasibility Studies

Standard travel-purpose slugs

Slug	Label
`conference`	Conference
`collaboration`	Collaboration
`workshop`	Workshop, training or course
`research-visit`	Research visit
`field-work`	Field work
`new-technique`	Learn new technique

Standard resource-category slugs

Slug	Label
`career-development`	Career development
`reproducibility`	Reproducibility
`science-communication`	Science Communication
`academic-writing`	Academic writing
`policy`	Policy
`preprints`	Preprints
`publishing`	Publishing
`peer-review`	Peer review
`data-management`	Data management
`mental-health`	Mental health and wellbeing
`networking`	Networking
`funding-advice`	Funding advice
`other`	Other

Vocabulary example

# data/entries/vocab/career-level/postdoc.yaml
slug: postdoc
label: Postdoc
description: Postdoctoral researchers, typically within 5 years of PhD completion.
sort_order: 4

Relationships between entities

Funding and travel-grant records reference funders via the funders field, which is an array of funder slugs:

funders:
  - embo
  - hfsp

The build scripts resolve these slugs to full funder objects when generating JSON artifacts. At validation time, validate_taxonomies.py checks that every slug in a funders array has a matching file in data/entries/funders/{slug}.yaml.

Similarly, vocabulary slugs in fields like career_levels, funding_purposes, and subjects are validated against the corresponding vocabulary directories.

Legacy fields

When content was migrated from the legacy MySQL database, some data could not be cleanly normalized. Legacy fields are preserved in YAML to maintain traceability and allow future clean-up.

Field	Appears on	Purpose
`legacy_id`	all types	Primary key (`id`) from the legacy MySQL table. Allows mapping back to the original database row.
`legacy_logo_path`	funders	The original path of the logo on the legacy server (e.g., `/uploads/logos/embo.png`). Used when fetching logos from the legacy server during migration.
`legacy_funder_name`	fundings, travel-grants	The raw funder name string from the legacy `company` or `funder` column, preserved when no matching funder YAML record has been created yet.

Legacy fields are prefixed with legacy_ to make them visually distinct and to signal that they are not part of the canonical data model. They are ignored by the frontend and the build scripts, but should not be deleted until the migration is fully verified.

Built JSON artifact format

The scripts/build/ scripts read all YAML files and generate JSON artifacts in data/built/. These files are committed to the repository so the site works without a CI build step (GitHub Pages can serve them directly).

Do not edit files in data/built/ manually — regenerate them with make build.

`data/built/records.json`

A flat array of all approved, active records across all types, fully resolved (vocabulary labels included, funder objects embedded).

[
  {
    "slug": "embo-scientific-exchange-grants",
    "type": "funding",
    "name": "EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants",
    "url": "https://www.embo.org/funding-awards/scientific-exchange-grants/",
    "description": "EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants support...",
    "funders": [
      { "slug": "embo", "name": "European Molecular Biology Organization", "short_name": "EMBO" }
    ],
    "funding_purposes": ["Collaboration", "Research"],
    "career_levels": ["PhD", "Postdoc", "Junior Faculty"],
    "subjects": ["Life Sciences"],
    "award_amount": "Up to EUR 2,500",
    "deadline": "Rolling",
    "status": "active",
    "featured": false
  }
]

`data/built/facets.json`

Aggregated facet counts for the search/filter UI.

{
  "funding_purposes": [
    { "slug": "research", "label": "Research", "count": 412 },
    { "slug": "fellowship", "label": "Fellowship, scholarship or training", "count": 287 }
  ],
  "career_levels": [
    { "slug": "postdoc", "label": "Postdoc", "count": 651 }
  ],
  "subjects": [...],
  "regions": [...]
}

`data/built/search-index.json`

A MiniSearch-compatible JSON index for client-side full-text search. Contains tokenized, weighted fields for name, description, funder names, and subjects.

`data/built/homepage-featured.json`

A curated array of records where featured: true, used to populate the homepage showcase section.

[
  {
    "slug": "embo-scientific-exchange-grants",
    "type": "funding",
    "name": "EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants",
    "funder_name": "EMBO",
    "award_amount": "Up to EUR 2,500"
  }
]

`data/built/funders.json`

Index of all approved funder records, used to resolve funder slugs to display names in the UI.

Validation rules summary

The validation scripts enforce the following constraints:

Every YAML file must parse without errors.
Every record must have slug, name, status, and review_status.
The slug must exactly match the filename (without .yaml).
Slugs must be unique within each type directory.
All funder slugs referenced in funders arrays must have a corresponding funder YAML file.
All vocabulary slugs must have a corresponding vocab YAML file of the correct type.
All URL fields must be valid HTTP/HTTPS URLs.
status must be one of: active, expired, archived, draft.
review_status must be one of: approved, pending, rejected.
Dates must be in YYYY-MM-DD format.

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File metadata and controls

Data Model

One-file-per-record approach

Entity types

Shared fields (all types)

Funder

Fields

Example

Funding

Fields

Example

Travel Grant

Fields

Example

Resource

Fields

Example

Vocabulary (Taxonomy)

Vocabulary types

Vocabulary record fields

Standard career-level slugs

Standard funding-purpose slugs

Standard travel-purpose slugs

Standard resource-category slugs

Vocabulary example

Relationships between entities

Legacy fields

Built JSON artifact format

data/built/records.json

data/built/facets.json

data/built/search-index.json

data/built/homepage-featured.json

data/built/funders.json

Validation rules summary

`data/built/records.json`

`data/built/facets.json`

`data/built/search-index.json`

`data/built/homepage-featured.json`

`data/built/funders.json`