1.3.0

RO-Crate Metadata Specification 1.3.0

• Permalink: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.3
• Published: 2026-06-22
• Publisher: researchobject.org community
• Status: Recommendation
• JSON-LD context: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.3/context
• This version: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.3
• Alternate formats: Web pages,
  single-page HTML,
  PDF,
  RO-Crate JSON-LD, RO-Crate HTML
• Previous version: https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.2
• Cite as: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20720080 (this version)
  https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3406497 (any version)
• Editors: Peter Sefton, Stian Soiland-Reyes, Eli Chadwick
• 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, Marc Portier, Paul Brack, Milan Ojsteršek, Bert Droesbeke, Chenxu Niu, Kosuke Tanabe, Tomasz Miksa, Marco La Rosa, Cedric Decruw, Andreas Czerniak, Jeremy Jay, Sergio Serra, Ronald Siebes, Shaun de Witt, Shady El Damaty, Douglas Lowe, Xuanqi Li, Sveinung Gundersen, Muhammad Radifar, Rudolf Wittner, Oliver Woolland, Paul De Geest, Douglas Fils, Florian Wetzels, Raül Sirvent, Abigail Miller, Jake Emerson, Davide Fucci, Bruno P. Kinoshita, Maciek Bąk, Jens Hollunder, Martin Weise, Vartika Bisht, Toshiyuki Nishiyama Hiraki, Bram Ulrichts, Michael Falk, Eli Chadwick, Daniel Bauer, James Love, Eleni Adamidi, Josh Moore, Lars Schöbitz, Andreas Meier, Juan Fuentes, Edan Bainglass, Balazs E. Pataki, Joe Heffer, Pascal Su, Andrea Davanzo, Meznah Aloqalaa, Pierre-Marie Allard, Venkat S Malladi, Esteban González, Phil Reed, Tilo Mathes, Saurabh Dome, Niklas-Maximilian Epping, Margareta Hellström, Paul Slavin

This document specifies a method, known as RO-Crate (Research Object Crate), of aggregating and describing data for distribution, re-use, publishing, preservation and archiving. RO-Crates aggregate data into a Dataset, and may describe any resource including files, URI-addressable resources, or use other addressing schemes to locate digital or physical data. Describing resources includes technical metadata such as file sizes and types as well as contextual information including how and where datasets and files were created, how they were collated and collected, who was involved in the process, what equipment and software was used, who funded the work, how to cite it, and crucially, how it may be reused, and by whom.

The core of RO-Crate is a machine-readable linked-data document in JSON-LD format known as an RO-Crate Metadata Document. RO-Crate metadata documents can, to a large extent, be created and processed just like any other JSON: knowledge of JSON-LD is not needed, unless extending RO-Crate with additional concepts or combining RO-Crate with other Linked Data technologies.

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

• RO-Crate 1.3.0

  • Notable change: Updated the Bioschemas namespace to https://bioschemas.org/terms/ for all types and properties (previously https://bioschemas.org/ for types and https://bioschemas.org/properties for properties). This change affects 4 terms in the JSON-LD context: ComputationalWorkflow, FormalParameter, input, and output. This is primarily relevant to those describing workflows with RO-Crate, either using the Workflows and Scripts chapter or the Workflow RO-Crate profile and its derivatives. #529

    Term	Previous URI	New URI
    ComputationalWorkflow	https://bioschemas.org/ComputationalWorkflow	https://bioschemas.org/terms/ComputationalWorkflow
    FormalParameter	https://bioschemas.org/FormalParameter	https://bioschemas.org/terms/FormalParameter
    input	https://bioschemas.org/properties/input	https://bioschemas.org/terms/input
    output	https://bioschemas.org/properties/output	https://bioschemas.org/terms/output

  • Update schema.org to v30.0. This update adds many new terms and removes none. None of the new terms are used in the 1.3 specification. Some of them may however be of interest to profile creators, including AuthenticateAction, Certification, Credential, Error, InstantaneousEvent, LoginAction, OperatingSystem, RuntimePlatform, pronouns, various types of source for digital objects to be used with digitalSourceType, and other properties associated with the classes above.

  • All other changes listed below are minor and are also applied to the web version of RO-Crate 1.2.

  • Fix error in appendix section Converting from Attached to Detached RO-Crate Package; the metadata descriptor must be ro-crate-metadata.json and should not be converted to an absolute path. ro-crate#538 #524

  • Add relevant missing rdfs: properties to core RO-Crate Profile Crate #471

  • Fix typos & incorrect links #169, #527

  • Improve page metadata for better previews/SEO (no content changed) #499