RO-Crate Metadata Specification 0.2.1

• Permalink: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/0.2
• Cite as: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3406498 (this version)
  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3406497 (any version)
• JSON-LD context: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/0.2/context
• Status: Working Draft
• Publisher: researchobject.org community
• Published: 2019-09-12
• Editors: Peter Sefton, Eoghan Ó Carragáin, 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

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.jsonld. 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.

Changes

This release is based on two earlier specifications:

• RO Lite 0.1.0
• DataCrate Specification version 1.0.0 2019-04-12

Notable changes include:

• RO-Crate Metadata file has been renamed to ro-crate-metadata.jsonld instead of CATALOG.json (DataCrate) or manifest.jsonld (RO-Lite)
• RO Crate Website renamed to ro-crate-metadata.html instead of DataCrate's CATALOG.html
• "RO-Lite" and "DataCrate" renamed to "RO-Crate"
• Multiple examples and clarifications added
• RO-Crate directory no longer requires BagIt structure
• Added section on Workflows and scripts
• RO-Crate Metadata File must describe itself as being about the RO-Crate Dataset.
• JSON-LD should now be flattened and then compacted (RO-Lite allowed any JSON-LD, DataCrate required flattened)