RO-Crate 1.1.0

RO-Crate Metadata Specification 1.1

• Permalink: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.1
• Published: 2020-10-30
• Publisher: researchobject.org community
• Status: Recommendation
• JSON-LD context: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.1/context
• This version: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.1
• Alternate formats: Web pages,
  single-page HTML,
  PDF,
  RO-Crate JSON-LD, RO-Crate HTML
• Previous version: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0
• Cite as: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4031327 (this version)
  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3406497 (any version)
• Editors: Peter Sefton, Stian Soiland-Reyes
• Authors: Peter Sefton, Eoghan Ó Carragáin, Stian Soiland-Reyes, Oscar Corcho, Daniel Garijo, Raul Palma, Frederik Coppens, Carole Goble, José María Fernández, Kyle Chard, Jose Manuel Gomez-Perez, Michael R Crusoe, Ignacio Eguinoa, Nick Juty, Kristi Holmes, Jason A. Clark, Salvador Capella-Gutierrez, Alasdair J. G. Gray, Stuart Owen, Alan R Williams, Giacomo Tartari, Finn Bacall, Thomas Thelen, Hervé Ménager, Laura Rodríguez Navas, Paul Walk, brandon whitehead, Mark Wilkinson, Paul Groth, Erich Bremer, LJ Garcia Castro, Karl Sebby, Alexander Kanitz, Ana Trisovic, Gavin Kennedy, Mark Graves, Jasper Koehorst, Simone Leo

This document specifies a method, known as RO-Crate (Research Object Crate), of organizing file-based data with associated metadata, using linked data principles, in both human and machine readable formats, with the ability to include additional domain-specific metadata.

The core of RO-Crate is a JSON-LD file, the RO-Crate Metadata File, named ro-crate-metadata.json. This file contains structured metadata about the dataset as a whole (the Root Data Entity) and, optionally, about some or all of its files. This provides a simple way to, for example, assert the authors (e.g. people, organizations) of the RO-Crate or one its files, or to capture more complex provenance for files, such as how they were created using software and equipment.

While providing the formal specification for RO-Crate, this document also aims to be a practical guide for software authors to create tools for generating and consuming research data packages, with explanation by examples.

Changelog

• Note: The RO-Crate metadata file is renamed to ro-crate-metadata.json to facilitate use of JSON editors. #82 #84
• Data entities can reference external resources with absolute URI #74
• Added section on considerations for Web-based Data Entities #74
• The root dataset is no longer required to be ./ #74
• RO-Crate Root directory no longer requires payload files #74
• Workflows and scripts section now aligned with BioSchemas ComputationalWorkflow profile #81 #100
• Added section Programming with JSON-LD and note that @type might be an array #85
• Added new section Handling relative URI references #73
• JSON-LD context no longer sets @base: null #73
• Added note on Encoding file paths #77 #80
• Added section Choosing URLs for ad hoc terms #71 #90
• Section RO-Crate JSON-LD Media type expanded to suggest HTTP server configuration
• Update JSON-LD context to schema.org 10.0
• Remove HTML use of relatedLink property in RepositoryCollection example #91
• Distinguish between contextual/data entities #94
• RO-Crate preview HTML no longer needs to "contain same information as JSON-LD" #108
• Change theme to jekyll-rtd-theme and split into multiple pages #95
• Fixed typos in JSON and English
• Additional metadata standards showed wrong PCDM namespace #112
• Citation example expanded 12a6754
• Terminology adds property, type, entity cc10e28
• In People author can also be applied to CreativeWork e086b8b
• Provenance section on Software-used now points to Workflows section (and vice versa) 5d89872 40de6c7
• In JSON-LD appendix @id should not include ../ 74ef6f1
• Several sections reviewed to improve language and examples #91 #92 #93 #94 #96 #97 #98 #101 #102 #103 #104 #105 #111
  #114