RO-Crate Metadata Specification 1.0.0

• Permalink: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0
• Status: Recommendation
• JSON-LD context: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context
• This version: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0
• Previous version: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/0.2
• Published: 2019-11-15
• Publisher: researchobject.org community
• Cite as: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3541888 (this version)
  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3406497 (any version)
• 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, Giacomo Tartari, Finn Bacall, Thomas Thelen

This document specifies a method, known as RO-Crate (Research Object Crate), of organizing file-based data with associated metadata, using LinkedData 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

• Description of RO-Crate Metadata File now required
  • .. must use conformsTo to indicate RO-Crate version
• Clarified use of RO-Crate JSON-LD Context
• Linked Data principles added
• RO-Crate JSON-LD Context updated to use schema.org 5.0
• Workflow and Script now typed with @type array instead of additionalType
• Simplified tables of direct properties to list of properties
• Simplified example of affiliation
• Clarified #identifiers and _:identifiers
• Removed links to data.research.uts.edu.au examples
• Added licensing of metadata
• Expanded on Equipment used to create files
• Simplified Workflow and Script section
• Added appendix on JSON-LD
• Added BagIt implementation notes
• Added Repository-specific identifiers
• RO-Crate JSON-LD now licensed CC0
• RO-Crate JSON-LD self-identifies its version