RO-Crate Metadata Specification 1.0

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

Introduction & definition of an RO-Crate
1. Terminology
2. Linked Data conventions
RO-Crate Structure
RO-Crate Metadata
Representing Contextual Entities
APPENDIX: RO-Crate JSON-LD
APPENDIX: Implementation notes
1. Combining with other packaging schemes
  1. Example of adding RO-Crate to Bagit
  2. Example of wrapping a BagIt bag in an RO-Crate
2. Repository-specific identifiers

See https://w3id.org/ro/crate for further details about RO-Crate.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an “AS IS” BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.

Note: The RO-Crate JSON-LD context and JSON-LD examples within this specification are distributed under CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication.

Introduction & definition of an RO-Crate

The key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

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.

Terminology

RO-Crate: A directory structure that contains a dataset, which is described in an RO-Crate Metadata File.

RO-Crate Root: The top-level directory of the RO-Crate, indicated by the presence of the RO-Crate Metadata File ro-crate-metadata.jsonld

RO-Crate Metadata File: A JSON-LD file stored as ro-crate-metadata.jsonld in the RO-Crate Root. The metadata file describes the RO-Crate with structured data in form of RO-Crate JSON-LD.

RO-Crate Website: Human-readable HTML pages which describe the RO-Crate (i.e. the Root Data Entity, its Data Entities and Context Entities), with a home-page at ro-crate-preview.html (any additional files reside in ro-crate-preview_files/)

Data Entity: A JSON-LD representation, in the RO-Crate Metadata File, of a directory, file or other resource contained or described by the RO-Crate.

Root Data Entity: A Data Entity of type Dataset, representing the RO-Crate as a whole.

RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor: A Contextual Entity of type CreativeWork, which describes the RO-Crate Metadata File and links it to the Root Data Entity.

JSON-LD: A JSON-based file format for storing Linked Data. This document assumes JSON-LD 1.0. JSON-LD use a context to map from JSON keys to URIs.

JSON: The JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) Data Interchange Format as defined by RFC 7159; a structured text file format that can be programmatically consumed and generated in a wide range of programming languages.

Contextual Entity: A JSON-LD representation of an entity associated with a Data Entity, needed to adequately describe that Data Entity. For example, a Person, Organization (including research projects), item of equipment (IndividualProduct), license or any other thing or event that forms part of the metadata for a Data Entity or supporting information.

Linked Data: A data structure where properties, types and resources are identified with URIs, which if retrieved over the Web, further describe or provide the identified property/type/resource.

URI: A Uniform Resource Identifier as defined in RFC 3986, for example http://example.com/path/file.html - commonly known as URL. In this document the term URI includes IRI, which also permit international Unicode characters.

URI Path: The relative path element of an URI as defined in RFC3986 section 3.3, e.g. path/file.html

RO-Crate JSON-LD Context: A JSON-LD context that provides Linked Data mapping for RO-Crate metadata to vocabularies like schema.org.

RO-Crate JSON-LD: JSON-LD structure using the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context and containing RO-Crate metadata, written as if flattened and then compacted according to the rules in JSON-LD 1.0. The RO-Crate JSON-LD for an RO-Crate is stored in the RO-Crate Metadata File.

Linked Data conventions

Throughout this specification, RDF terms are referred to using the keys defined in the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context.

Following schema.org practice, property names start with lowercase letters and Class names start with uppercase letters.

In ro-crate-metadata.jsonld the RDF terms use their RO-Crate JSON-LD names as defined in the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context, which is available at https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context

RO-Crate Structure

The structure an RO-Crate MUST follow is:

<RO-Crate root directory>/
|   ro-crate-metadata.jsonld  # RO-Crate Metadata File MUST be present
|   ro-crate-preview.html     # RO-Crate Website homepage MAY be present
|   ro-crate-preview_files/   # MAY be present
|    | [other RO-Crate Website files]
|   [payload files and directories]  # 1 or more SHOULD be present

The name of the RO-Crate root directory is not defined, but a root directory is identifiable by the presence of ro-crate-metadata.jsonld. For instance, if an RO-Crate is archived in a ZIP-file, the ZIP root directory correspond to RO-Crate root directory if it contains ro-crate-metadata.jsonld.

RO-Crate Metadata File (`ro-crate-metadata.jsonld`)

The RO-Crate Metadata File MUST be named ro-crate-metadata.jsonld and appear in the RO-Crate Root
The RO-Crate Metadata File MUST contain RO-Crate JSON-LD; a valid JSON-LD 1.0 document in flattened and compacted form
The RO-Crate JSON-LD SHOULD use the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context by reference.

JSON-LD is a structured form of JSON that can represent a Linked Data graph.

A valid RO-Crate JSON-LD graph MUST describe:

The RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor
The Root Data Entity
Zero or more Data Entities
Zero or more Contextual Entities

It is RECOMMENDED that any referenced contextual entities are also described in the RO-Crate Metadata File with the same identifier. Similarly it is RECOMMENDED that any contextual entity in the RO-Crate Metadata file is linked to from at least one of the other entities using the same identifier.

The appendix RO-Crate JSON-LD details the general structure of the JSON-LD that is expected in the RO-Crate Metadata File. In short, the rest of this specification describe the different types of entities that can be added as {} objects to the RO-Crate JSON-LD @graph below:

{ "@context": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context",
  "@graph": [

  ]
}

RO-Crate Website (`ro-crate-preview.html` and `ro-crate-preview_files/`)

In addition to the machine-oriented RO-Crate Metadata File, the RO-Crate MAY include a human-readable HTML rendering of the same information, known as the RO-Crate Website.

If present in the root directory, ro-crate-preview.html MUST:

Be a valid HTML 5 document
Contain at least a human readable summary of metadata relating to the Root Data Entity

Contain a copy of the RO-Crate JSON-LD in a script element of the head element of the HTML, for example:

    <script type="application/ld+json">
    {
  "@context": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context",
  "@graph": [ ...]
    }
    </script>

ro-crate-preview.html SHOULD:

Contain at least the same information as the RO-Crate JSON-LD, with the exception that files which have no description, author or similar metadata MAY not be listed in the website.
Display at least the metadata relating to the Root Data Enity as static HTML without the need for scripting. It MAY contain extra features enabled by JavaScript.
When a Data Entity or Contextual Entity is referenced by its ID:
If it has a name property, provide a link to its HTML version.
If it does not have a name (e.g. a GeoCoordinates location), show it embedded in the HTML for the entity.
For keys that resolve in the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context to a URI, indicate this (the simplest way is to link the key to its definition.
For external URI values, provide a link.
If there is sufficient metadata, contain a prominent “Cite-as” text with a natural language data citation (see for example the FORCE11 Data Citation Principles).
If there are additional resources necessary to render the preview (e.g. CSS, JSON, HTML), link to them in a subdirectory ro-crate-preview-files/

Payload files and directories

These are the actual files and directories that make up the dataset being described.

The base RO-Crate specification makes no assumptions about the presence of any specific files or folders beyond the reserved RO-Crate files described above. Payload files may appear directly in the RO-Crate Root alongside the RO-Crate Metadata File, and/or appear in sub-directories of the RO-Crate Root. Each file and directory MAY be represented as Data Entities in the RO-Crate Metadata File.

RO-Crates SHOULD be self-describing and self-contained

A minimal RO-Crate is a directory containing a single RO-Crate Metadata File.

At the basic level, an RO-Crate is a collection of files represented as a schema.org Dataset, that together form a meaningful unit for the purposes of communication, citation, distribution, preservation, etc. The RO-Crate Metadata File describes the RO-Crate, and MUST be stored in the RO-Crate Root. Self-containment is a core principle of RO-Crate, i.e. that all Dataset files and relevant metadata SHOULD, as far as possible, be contained by the RO-Crate, rather than referring to external resources. However the RO-Crate MAY also reference external resources which are stored or accessed separately, via URIs, e.g. because these cannot be included for practical or legal reasons.

It is important to note that the RO-Crate Metadata File is not an exhaustive manifest or inventory, that is, it does not necessarily list or describe all files in the package. Rather it is focused on providing sufficient amount of metadata to understand and use the content, and is designed to be compatible with existing and future approaches that do have full inventories / manifest and integrity checks, e.g. by using checksums, such as BagIt and Oxford Common File Layout OCFL Objects.

The intention is that RO-Crates can work well with a variety of archive file formats, e.g. tar, zip, etc., and approaches to capturing file manifests and file fixity, such as BagIt, OCFL and git.

RO-Crate Metadata

RO-Crate aims to capture and describe the Research Object using structured metadata.

The RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor contains the metadata that describes the RO-Crate and its content, in particular:

Root Data Entity - the Dataset itself, a gathering of data
Data Entities - the data payload, in the form of files and folders
Contextual Entities - related things in the world (e.g. people, organizations, places), providing provenance for the data entities and the RO-Crate.

This machine-readable metadata can also be represented for human consumption in the RO-Crate Website, linking to data and Web resources.

RO-Crate uses Linked Data principles

RO-Crate makes use of Linked Data principles for its description. In particular:

(Meta)data should be made available as Open Data on the web.
(Meta)data should be machine-readable in a structured format.
(Meta)data should not require proprietary software packages.
(Meta)data should use open standards from W3C, such as RDF and SPARQL.
(Meta)data should link to other people’s data to provide context, using URIs as global identifiers

RO-Crate realize these principles using a particular set of technologies and best practices:

The RO-Crate Metadata File and RO-Crate Website can be directly published on the web together with the RO-Crate payload. In addition, a data package (e.g. BagIt Zip archive) that contain the RO-Crate can also be published on the web.
The RO-Crate Metadata File is based on the structured data format JSON.
Multiple open source tools/libraries are available for JSON and for JSON-LD.
The RO-Crate Website is HTML 5, and the RO-Crate Metadata File is JSON-LD, one of the W3C RDF 1.1 formats.
The RO-Crate Metadata File reuse common vocabularies like schema.org, and this specification recommend identifiers it should link to.

Base metadata standard for RO-Crate: Schema.org

schema.org is the base metadata standard for RO-Crate. Schema.org was chosen because it is widely used on the World Wide Web and supported by search engines, on the assumption that discovery is likely to be maximized if search engines index the content. NOTE: As far as we know there is no alternative, well-maintained linked-data schema for research data with the coverage needed for this project - i.e. a single standard for expressing all the examples presented in this specification.

RO-Crate relies heavily on schema.org using a constrained subset of JSON-LD, and this document gives opinionated recommendations on how to represent the metadata using existing linked data best practices.

Differences from schema.org

Generally, the standard keys from schema.org should be used. However, RO-Crate uses variant names for some elements, specifically:

File is mapped to http://schema.org/MediaObject which was chosen as a compromise as it has many of the properties that are needed to describe a generic file. Future versions of schema.org or a research data extension may re-define File.
Journal is mapped to http://schema.org/Periodical.

Note that JSON-LD examples given on http://schema.org/ website may not be in flattened form; any nested entities in RO-Crate JSON-LD SHOULD be described as separate contextual entities in the flat @graph list.

To simplify processing and avoid confusion with string values, the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context requires URIs and entity references to be given in the form "author": {"@id": "http://example.com/alice"}, even where schema.org for some properties otherwise permit shorter forms like "author": "http://example.com/alice".

See the appendix RO-Crate JSON-LD for details.

Additional metadata standards

The following terms from the from the Research Object ontologies are used:

Workflow for a workflow definition, mapped to http://purl.org/wf4ever/wfdesc#Workflow
Script for a script, mapped to http://purl.org/wf4ever/wf4ever#Script
WorkflowSketch for an image depicting a workflow, mapped to http://purl.org/wf4ever/roterms#Sketch.

RO-Crate also uses the Portland Common Data Model (PCDM)) and imports these terms:

RepositoryObject mapped to https://pcdm.org/2016/04/18/models#Object
RepositoryCollection mapped to https://pcdm.org/2016/04/18/models#Collection
RepositoryFile mapped to https://pcdm.org/2016/04/18/models#Collection
hasMember mapped to https://pcdm.org/2016/04/18/models#hasMember
hasFile mapped to https://pcdm.org/2016/04/18/models#hasFile

The keys RepositoryObject and RepositoryCollection were chosen to avoid collision between the terms Collection and Object with other vocabularies.

From Dublin Core Terms RO-Crate use:

conformsTo mapped to http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo

Summary of Coverage

RO-Crate is simply a way to make metadata assertions about a set of files and folders that make up a Dataset. These assertions can be made at three levels:

Assertions at the RO-Crate level: for an RO-Crate to be useful, some metadata should be provided about the dataset as a whole (see minimum requirements for different use-cases below). In the RO-Crate Metadata File, we distinguish the Root Data Entity which represents the RO-Crate as a whole, from other Data Entities (files and folders contained in the RO-Crate) and Contextual Entities, e.g. a person, organisation, place related to an RO-Crate Data Entity
Assertions about files and folders contained in the RO-Crate: in addition to providing metadata about the RO-Crate as a whole, RO-Crate allows metadata assertions to be made about any other Data Entity

This document has guidelines for ways to represent common requirements for describing data in a research context, e.g.:

Contact information for a data set.
Descriptive information for a dataset and the files within it and their contexts such as an abstract, spatial and temporal coverage.
Associated Publications.
Funding relationships.
Provenance information of various kinds; who (people and organizations) and what (instruments and computer programs) created or contributed to the data set and individual files within it.
Workflows that operate on the data using standard workflow descriptions including ‘single step workflows’; executable files or environments such as singularity containers or Jupyter notebooks.

However, as RO-Crate uses Linked Data principles, adopters of RO-Crate are free to supplement RO-Crate using schema.org metadata and/or assertions using other Linked Data vocabularies.

Future coverage

A future version of this specification will allow for variable-level assertions: In some cases, e.g. for tabular data, additional metadata may be provided about the structure and variables within a given file see the Use Case Describe a tabular data file directly in RO-Crate metadata for work-in-progress.

Recommended Identifiers

RO-Crate JSON-LD SHOULD use the following IDs where possible:

For a Root Data Entity, an identifier which is RECOMMENDED to be a https://doi.org/ URI.
For a Person participating in the research process: ORCID identifiers, e.g. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1825-0097
For Organizations including funders, Research Organization Registry URIs, e.g. https://ror.org/0384j8v12
For items of type Place, a geonames URL, e.g. http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/
For file formats, a Pronom URL, for example https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/fmt/831.

In the absence of the above, RO-Crates SHOULD contain stable persistent URIs to identify all entities wherever possible.

Core Metadata for the Root Data Entity

The Root Data Entity is a Dataset that represent the RO-Crate as a whole; a Research Object that includes the Data Entities and the related Contextual Entities.

The RO-Crate JSON-LD MUST contain a RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor with the @id value ro-crate-metadata.jsonld and @type CreativeWork. This descriptor MUST have an about property referencing the Root Data Entity, which SHOULD have an @id of ./.

{ "@context": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context", 
  "@graph": [
    {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "@id": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
        "conformsTo": {"@id": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0"},
        "about": {"@id": "./"}
    },
    
    {
      "@id": "./",
      "@type": "Dataset",
      ...
    }
  ]
}

The conformsTo of the RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor SHOULD be a versioned permalink URI of the RO-Crate specification that the RO-Crate JSON-LD conforms to. The URI SHOULD start with https://w3id.org/ro/crate/.

Consumers processing the RO-Crate as an JSON-LD graph can thus reliably find the the Root Data Entity by following this algorithm:

For each entity in @graph array
..if the conformsTo property is a URI that starts with https://w3id.org/ro/crate/
….from this entity’s about object keep the @id URI as variable root
For each entity in @graph array
.. if the entity has an @id URI that matches root return it

To ensure a base-line interoperability between RO-Crates, and for an RO-Crate to be considered a Valid RO-Crate, a minimum set of metadata is required for the Root Data Entity. As stated above the RO-Crate Metadata File is not an exhaustive manifest or inventory, that is, it does not necessarily list or describe all files in the package. For this reason, there are no minimum metadata requirements in terms of describing Data Entities (files and folders) other than the Root Data Entity. Extensions of RO-Crate dealing with specific types of dataset may put further constraints or requirements of metadata beyond the Root Data Entity (see Extending RO-Crate below).

The RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor MAY contain information such as licensing for the RO-Crate Metadata File so metadata can be licensed separately from Data.

The table below outlines the properties that the Root Data Entity MUST have to be minimally valid and additionally highlights properties required to meet other common use-cases, including the minimum metadata necessary to mint a DataCite DOI:

Direct properties of the Root Data Entity

The Root Data Entity MUST have the following properties:

@type: MUST be Dataset
@id: MUST be a a string of ‘./’
name: SHOULD identify the dataset to humans well enough to disambiguate it from other RO-Crates
description: SHOULD further elaborate on the name to provide a summary of the context in which the dataset is important.
datePublished: MUST be a string in ISO 8601 date format and SHOULD be specified to at least the precision of a day, MAY be a timestamp down to the millisecond.
license: SHOULD link to a Contextual Entity in the RO-Crate Metadata File with a name and description. MAY have a URI (eg for Creative Commons or Open Source licenses). MAY, if necessary be a textual description of how the RO-Crate may be used.

NOTE: These requirements are stricter than those published for Google Dataset Search which requires a Dataset to have a name and description,

NOTE: The properties above are not sufficient to generate a DataCite citation. Advice on integrating with DataCite will be provided in a future version of this specification, or as an implementation guide.

The following RO-Crate Metadata File represents a minimal description of an RO-Crate.

{ "@context": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context", 
  "@graph": [

 {
    "@type": "CreativeWork",
    "@id": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
    "conformsTo": {"@id": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0"},
    "about": {"@id": "./"}
 },  
 {
    "@id": "./",
    "identifier": "https://doi.org/10.4225/59/59672c09f4a4b",
    "@type": "Dataset",
    "datePublished": "2017",
    "name": "Data files associated with the manuscript:Effects of facilitated family case conferencing for ...",
    "description": "Palliative care planning for nursing home residents with advanced dementia ...",
    "license": {"@id": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/au/"}
 },
{
  "@id": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/au/",
  "@type": "CreativeWork",
  "description": "This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/au/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.",
  "identifier": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/au/",
  "name": "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 AU)"
  }
 ]
}

Examples of referencing Data Entities (files and folders) from the Root Data Entity

Where files and folders are represented as Data Entities in the RO-Crate JSON-LD, these MUST be linked to, either directly or indirectly, from the Root Data Entity using the hasPart property. Directory hierarchies MAY be represented with nested Dataset Data Entities, or the Root Dataset MAY refer to files anywhere in the hierarchy using hasPart.

Data Entities representing files MUST be of @type: File, which is an RO-Crate alias for http://schema.org/MediaObject

Data Entities representing directories MUST be of @type: Dataset.

Note: as indicated above, there is no requirement to represent every file and folder in an RO-Crate as Data Entities in the RO-Crate JSON-LD.

Example linking to a file and folders

<base directory>/
  |   ro-crate-metadata.jsonld
  |   cp7glop.ai
  |   lots_of_little_files/
  |    | file1
  |    | file2
  |    | ...
  |    | file54

An example RO-Crate JSON-LD for the above would be as follows:

{ "@context": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@type": "CreativeWork",
      "@id": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
      "conformsTo": {"@id": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0"},
      "about": {"@id": "./"}
    },  
    {
      "@id": "./",
      "@type": [
        "Dataset"
      ],
      "hasPart": [
        {
          "@id": "cp7glop.ai"
        },
        {
          "@id": "lots_of_little_files/"
        }
      ]
    },
    {
      "@id": "cp7glop.ai",
      "@type": "File",
      "contentSize": "383766",
      "description": "Illustrator file for Glop Pot",
      "encodingFormat": "application/pdf"
    },
    {
      "@id": "lots_of_little_files/",
      "@type": "Dataset",
      "description": "This directory contains many small files, that we're not going to describe in detail.",
      "name": "Too many files"
    }
  ]
}

Adding detailed descriptions of encodings

The above example provides a media type for the file cp7glop.ai - which is useful as it may not be apparent that the file readable as a PDF file from the extension. To add more detail, encodings SHOULD be linked using a PRONOM identifier to a Contextual Entity of @type WebSite.

 {
    "@id": "cp7glop.ai",
    "@type": "File",
    "contentSize": "383766",
    "description": "Illustrator file for Glop Pot",
    "encodingFormat": ["application/pdf", {"@id": "https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/fmt/19"}]
  },
  {
    "@id": "https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/PRONOM/fmt/19",
    "name": "Acrobat PDF 1.5 - Portable Document Format",
    "@type": "WebSite"
  }

If there is no PRONOM identifier, then a contextual entity with a URL as an @id MAY be used:

For example:

 {
    "@id": "1st-tool.cwl",
    "@type": "File",
    "contentSize": "120",
    "description": "An example Common Workflow Language File",
    "encodingFormat": ["text/plain", {"@id": "https://www.commonwl.org/v1.0/Workflow.html"}]
  },
    {
    "@id": "https://www.commonwl.org/v1.0/Workflow.html",
    "name": "Common Workflow Language (CWL) Workflow Description, v1.0.2",
    "@type": "WebSite"
  }

If there is no web-accessible description for a file format it SHOULD be described locally in the dataset, for example in a file:

 {
    "@id": "some-file.some_extension",
    "@type": "File",
    "contentSize": "120",
    "description": "A file in a non-standard format",
    "encodingFormat": ["text/plain", {"@id": "https://www.commonwl.org/v1.0/Workflow.html"}]
  },
  {
    "@id": "some_extension.md",
    "encodingFormat": "text/markdown",
    "name": "Description of some_extension file format",
    "@type": ["File", "CreativeWork"]
  }

Core Metadata for Data Entities

The table below outlines the properties that Data Entities, when present, MUST have to be minimally valid .

File Data Entity

A File Data Entity MUST have the following properties:

@type: MUST be File, or an array where File is one of the values.
@id MUST be a URI Path relative to the RO Crate root

Directory File Entity

A Dataset (directory) Data Entity MUST have the following properties:

@type MUST be Dataset or an array where Dataset is one of the values.
@id MUST be a URI Path relative to the _RO Crate root; SHOULD end with /

Representing Contextual Entities

The RO-Crate JSON-LD @graph SHOULD contain additional information about Contextual Entities for the use of both humans (in ro-crate-preview.html) and machines (in ro-crate-metadata.jsonld). This also helps to maximise the extent to which an RO-Crate is self-contained and self-describing, in that it reduces the need for the consumer of an RO-Crate to refer to external information which may change or become unavailable over time.

People

A core principle of Linked data is to use URIs to identify things such as people. The following is the minimum recommended way of representing a author in a RO-Crate. This property MAY be applied in the context of a directory (Dataset) or to a File.

{
    "@type": "Dataset",
    "@id": "./",
    "author": {"@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8367-6908"}
}
{
    "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8367-6908",
    "@type": "Person",
    "affiliation": "University of Technology Sydney",
    "name": "J. Xuan"
}

This uses an ORCID to unambiguously identify an author, with a Contextual Entity of type Person.

Note the string-value of the organizational affiliation. This SHOULD be improved by also providing a Contextual Entity for the organization (see example below).

Organizations as values

An Organization SHOULD be the value for the publisher property of a Dataset or ScholarlyArticle or affiliation property of a Person.

{
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "@id": "./",
  "publisher": {"@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041"}
}

{
  "@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "University of Technology Sydney",
  "url": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041"
}

An Organization SHOULD also be used for a Person’s affiliation property.

{
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "@id": "./",
  "publisher": {"@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041"},
  "author": {"@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-944X"}
},
{
  "@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "name": "University of Technology Sydney"
},
{
  "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-944X",
  "@type": "Person",
  "affiliation": {"@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041"},
  "email": "peter.sefton@uts.edu.au",
  "name": "Peter Sefton"
}

More detail on ContactPoint

A RO-Crate SHOULD have contact information, using a contextual entity of type ContactPoint. Note that in schema.org Dataset does not currently have the corresponding contactPoint property, so the contact point would need to be given through a Person or Organization contextual entity which are related to the Dataset via a author or publisher property.

{
      "@id": "./",
      "@type": "Dataset",
      "author": {"@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6121-5409"}
},
{
      "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6121-5409",
      "@type": "Person",
      "contactPoint": {
        "@id": "mailto:tim.luckett@uts.edu.au"
      },
      "familyName": "Luckett",
      "givenName": "Tim",
      "identifier": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6121-5409",
      "name": "Tim Luckett"
},
{
      "@id": "mailto:tim.luckett@uts.edu.au",
      "@type": "ContactPoint",
      "contactType": "customer service",
      "email": "tim.luckett@uts.edu.au",
      "identifier": "tim.luckett@uts.edu.au",
      "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6121-5409"
}

Publications via citation property

To associate a publication with a dataset the RO-Crate JSON-LD MUST include a URL (for example a DOI URL) as the @id of a publication using the citation property.

For example:

"citation": {"@id": "https://doi.org/10.1109/TCYB.2014.2386282"}

The publication SHOULD be described in the RO-Crate JSON-LD.

{
  "@id": "https://doi.org/10.1109/TCYB.2014.2386282",
  "@type": "ScholarlyArticle",
  "author": [
    {
      "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8367-6908"
    },
    {
      "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0690-4732"
    },
    {
      "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3960-0583"
    },
    {
      "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6953-3986"
    }
  ],
  "identifier": "https://doi.org/10.1109/TCYB.2014.2386282",
  "issn": "2168-2267",
  "name": "Topic Model for Graph Mining",
  "journal": "IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics",
  "datePublished": "2015"
}

Publisher

The Root Data Entity SHOULD have a publisher property. This SHOULD be an Organization though it MAY be a Person.

{
  "@id": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1009240",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "name": "Sample dataset for RO-Crate v0.2",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041"
  },
  "temporalCoverage": "2017"
},

{
  "@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "identifier": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041",
  "name": "University of Technology Sydney"
},

Funding and grants

To associate a research project with a Dataset, the RO-Crate JSON-LD SHOULD contain an entity for the project using type Organization, referenced by a funder property. The project Organization SHOULD in turn reference any external funder, either by using its URL as an @id or via a Contextual Entity describing the funder.

NOTE: To make it very clear where funding is coming from, the Root Data Entity SHOULD also reference funders directly, as well as via a chain of references.

{
  "@id": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1009240",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "funder": {
    "@id": "https://ror.org/038sjwq14"
  },
},
{
  "@id": "https://eresearch.uts.edu.au/projects/provisioner",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "description": "The University of Technology Sydney Provisioner project is ...",
  "funder": [
    {
      "@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041"
    },
    {
      "@id": "https://ands.org.au"
    }
  ],
  "identifier": "https://eresearch.uts.edu.au/projects/provisioner",
  "name": "Provisioner"
},
{
  "@id": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041",
  "@type": "Organisation",
  "identifier": "https://ror.org/03f0f6041",
  "name": "University of Technology Sydney"
},
{
  "@id": "https://ands.org.au",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "description": "The core purpose of the Australian National Data Service (ANDS) is ...",
  "identifier": "https://ands.org.au",
  "name": "Australian National Data Service"
},

Licensing, Access control and copyright

If a Data Entity has a license that is different from the license on the Root Data Entity, the entity SHOULD have a license property referencing a Contextual Entity with a type CreativeWork to describe the license. The @id of the license SHOULD be its URL (e.g. a Creative Commons License URL) and, when possible, a summary of the license included using the description property.

The below Data Entity has a copyrightHolder which is different from its author. There is a reference to an Organization describing the copyright holder and, to give credit, a sameAs relation to a web page. The license property here refers to https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ which is expanded in a separate contextual entity.

{
  "@id": "SciDataCon Presentations/AAA_Pilot_Project_Abstract.html",
  "@type": "File",
  "contentSize": "17085",
  "copyrightHolder": {
    "@id": "https://www.idrc.ca/"
  },
  "author": {
    "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X"
  },
  "description": "Abstract for the Pilot Project initial findings",
  "encodingFormat": "text/html",
  "license": {
    "@id": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
  },
  "sameAs": "https://www.scidatacon.org/2016/sessions/56/paper/265/"
},

{
  "@id": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "@type": "CreativeWork",
  "name": "CC BY 4.0",
  "description": "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License"
},

{
  "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X",
  "@type": "Person",
  "identifier": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-716X",
  "name": "Cameron Neylon"
},

{
  "@id": "https://www.idrc.ca/",
  "@type": "Organization",
  "description": "Canadian Frown Corporation and funder of development research",
  "identifier": "IDRC",
  "name": "International Development Research Center"
}

Metadata license

In some cases the license of the RO-Crate metadata the (JSON-LD statements in the RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor) is different from the license on the Root Date Entity and its content (data entities indicated by hasPart).

For instance, a common pattern for repositories is to license metadata as CC0 Public Domain Dedication, while data is licensed as CC-BY or similar. This pattern allow metadata to be combined freely (e.g. the DataCite knowledge graph), while redistribution of data files would require explicit attribution and statement of their license.

To express the metadata license is different from the Root Data Entity, expand the RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor to include license:

{
  "@type": "CreativeWork",
  "@id": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
  "identifier": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
  "about": {"@id": "./"},
  "license": {
    "@id": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/"
  }
},

{
  "@id": "./",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "license": {
    "@id": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
  }
}

If no explicit license is expressed on the RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor, the license expressed on the Root Data Entity apply also on the RO-Crate metadata.

Provenance: Equipment used to create files

To specify which equipment was used to create or update a Data Entity, the RO-Crate JSON-LD SHOULD have a Context Entity for each item of equipment which SHOULD be of @type IndividualProduct. The entity SHOULD have a serial number, manufacturer that identifies it as completely as possible. In this case the equipment is a bespoke machine. The equipment SHOULD be described on a web page, and the address of the description SHOULD be used as its @id.

{
  "@id": "https://confluence.csiro.au/display/ASL/Hovermap",
  "@type": "IndividualProduct",
  "description": "The CSIRO bentwing is an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, commonly known as a drone) with a LIDAR ... ",
  "identifier": "https://confluence.csiro.au/display/ASL/Hovermap",
  "name": "Bentwing"
}

Uses CreateAction and UpdateAction class to model the contributions of Context Entities of type Person or Organization in the creation of files.

In this example the CreateAction has a human agent, the object is a Place (a cave) and the Hovermap drone is the instrument used in the file creation event.

{
      "@id": "#DataCapture_wcc02",
      "@type": "CreateAction",
      "agent": {
        "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1672-552X"
      },
      "instrument": {
        "@id": "https://confluence.csiro.au/display/ASL/Hovermap"
      },
      "object": {
        "@id": "#victoria_arch"
      },
      "result": [
        {
          "@id": "wcc02_arch.laz"
        },
        {
          "@id": "wcc02_arch_traj.txt"
        }
      ]
    },
  {
      "@id": "#victoria_arch",
      "@type": "Place",
      "address": "Wombeyan Caves, NSW 2580",
      "name": "Victoria Arch"
  }

Provenance: Software used to create files

To specify which software was used to create or update a file the software application SHOULD be represented with an entity of type SoftwareApplication, with a version property, e.g. from tool --version.

For example:

{
      "@id": "https://www.imagemagick.org/",
      "@type": "SoftwareApplication",
      "url": "https://www.imagemagick.org/",
      "name": "ImageMagick",
      "version": "ImageMagick 6.9.7-4 Q16 x86_64 20170114 http://www.imagemagick.org"
}

The software SHOULD be associated with the File it created using a CreateAction with the File referenced by a result property. Any input files SHOULD be referenced by the object property.

In the below example, an image with the @id of pics/2017-06-11%2012.56.14.jpg was transformed into an new image pics/sepia_fence.jpg using the ImageMagick software application. Actions MAY have human-readable names, which MAY be machine generated for use at scale.

{
      "@id": "#Photo_Capture_1",
      "@type": "CreateAction",
      "agent": {
        "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-944X"
      },
      "description": "Photo snapped on a photo walk on a misty day",
      "endTime": "2017-06-11T12:56:14+10:00",
      "instrument": [
        {
          "@id": "#EPL1"
        },
        {
          "@id": "#Panny20mm"
        }
      ],
      "result": {
        "@id": "pics/2017-06-11%2012.56.14.jpg"
      }
    },
    {
      "@id": "#SepiaConversion_1",
      "@type": "CreateAction",
      "name": "Convert dog image to sepia",
      "description": "convert -sepia-tone 80% test_data/sample/pics/2017-06-11\\ 12.56.14.jpg test_data/sample/pics/sepia_fence.jpg",
      "endTime": "2018-09-19T17:01:07+10:00",
      "instrument": {
        "@id": "https://www.imagemagick.org/"
      },
      "object": {
        "@id": "pics/2017-06-11%2012.56.14.jpg"
      },
      "result": {
        "@id": "pics/sepia_fence.jpg"
      }
    },

Provenance: Changes to RO-Crates

To record an action which changes the DataSet’s metadata, or changes its state in a publication or other workflow, a CreateAction or UpdateAction SHOULD be associated with a Data Entity.

A curation Action MUST have at least one object which associates it with either the DataSet or one of its components.

An Action which creates new Data entities - for example, the creation of a new metadata file - SHOULD have these as results.

An Action SHOULD have a name and MAY have a description.

An Action SHOULD have an endTime, which MUST be in ISO 8601 date format and SHOULD be specified to at least the precision of a day. An Action MAY have a startTime meeting the same specifications.

An Action SHOULD have a human agent who was responsible for authorizing the action, and MAY have an instrument which associates the action with a particular piece of software (for example, the content management system or data catalogue through which an update was approved) which SHOULD be of @type SoftwareApplication.

An Action’s status MAY be recorded in an actionStatus property. The status must be one of the values enumerated by ActionStatusType: ActiveActionStatus, CompletedActionStatus, FailedActionStatus or PotentialActionStatus.

An Action which has failed MAY record any error information in an error property.

UpdateAction SHOULD only be used for actions which affect the DataSet as a whole, such as movement through a workflow.

To record curation actions which modify a File within a DataSet - for example, by correcting or enhancing metadata - the old version of the File SHOULD be retained, and a CreateAction added which has the original version as its object and the new version as its result.

{
    "@id": "#history-01",
    "@type": "CreateAction",
    "object": { "@id": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1009240" },
    "name": "RO-Crate created",
    "endTime": "2018-08-31",
    "agent": { "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5152-5307" },
    "instrument": { "@id": "https://stash.research.uts.edu.au" },
    "actionStatus":  { "@id": "http://schema.org/CompletedActionStatus" }
},

{
    "@id": "#history-02",
    "@type": "UpdateAction",
    "object": { "@id": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1009240" },
    "name": "RO-Crate published",
    "endTime": "2018-09-10",
    "agent": { "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5152-5307" },
    "instrument": { "@id": "https://stash.research.uts.edu.au" },
    "actionStatus":  {"@id":" http://schema.org/CompletedActionStatus" }
},

{ 
    "@id": "#history-03",
    "@type": "CreateAction",
    "object": { "@id": "metadata.xml.v0.1" },
    "result": { "@id": "metadata.xml" },
    "name": "metadata update",
    "endTime": "2018-09-12",
    "agent": { "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5152-5307" },
    "instrument": { "@id": "https://stash.research.uts.edu.au" },
    "actionStatus": { "@id": "http://schema.org/CompletedActionStatus" }
},

{
    "@id": "#history-04",
    "@type": "UpdateAction",
    "object": { "@id": "https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1009240" },
    "name": "RO-Crate published",
    "endTime": "2018-09-13",
    "agent": { "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5152-5307" },
    "instrument": { "@id": "https://stash.research.uts.edu.au" },
    "actionStatus": { "@id": "http://schema.org/FailedActionStatus" },
    "error": "Record is already published"
},


{
    "@id": "https://stash.research.uts.edu.au",
    "@type": "IndividualProduct",
    "name": "Stash",
    "description": "UTS Research Data Catalogue",
    "identifier": "https://stash.research.uts.edu.au"
}

Workflows and scripts

Scientific workflows and scripts that were used (or can be used) to analyze or generate files contained in an the RO-Crate MAY be embedded in an RO-Crate. Workflows and scripts SHOULD be described using the data entities of type SoftwareSourceCode.

The distinction between SoftwareSourceCode and SoftwareApplication for software is fluid, and comes down to availability and understandability. For instance, office spreadsheet applications are generally available and do not need further explanation (SoftwareApplication); while a Python script that is customized for a particular data analysis might be important to understand further and should therefore be included as SoftwareSourceCode in the RO-Crate dataset.

A workflow is a Data Entity which MUST have the following properties:

@type is an array with at least File and Workflow as values.
@id is a File URI linking to the workflow entry-point.

Minimal example describing a workflow:

{
    "@id": "workflow/retropath.knime",  
    "@type": ["File", "SoftwareSourceCode", "Workflow"],
    "author": {"@id": "#thomas"},
    "name": "RetroPath Knime workflow",
    "description": "Retrosynthesis workflow calculating chemical reactions",
    "license": { "@id": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-NC-SA-4.0"},
    "programmingLanguage": {"@id": "#knime"}
}

The @type property SHOULD be an array, to also indicate the particular nature of the source code as a script or a workflow. The distinction is fluid, depending on if the code is primarily indicating what should be done (Workflow), or how tasks should be executed (Script).

To indicate that a SoftwareSourceCode is primarily in the form of an executable script (e.g. sequential batch/shell script that call other commands and manage files), use:

  "@type": ["File", "SoftwareSourceCode", "Script"],

If the SoftwareSourceCode is primarily in the form of a workflow (e.g. a pipeline of steps with data flow), use:

  "@type": ["File", "SoftwareSourceCode", "Workflow"],

Workflows and scripts saved on disk using a programming language generally need a runtime, in RO-Crate this SHOULD be indicated using a liberal interpretation of programmingLanguage.

Note that the language and its runtime MAY differ (e.g. multiple different C++-compilers), but for scripts and workflows, frequently the language and runtime are essentially the same, and thus the programmingLanguage can be described in one go as a hybrid of a ComputerLanguage and SoftwareApplication:

{
  "@id": "scripts/analyse_csv.py",
  "@type": ["File", "SoftwareSourceCode", "Script"],
  "name": "Analyze CSV files",
  "programmingLanguage": {"@id": "https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-380/"},
},
{
  "@id": "https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-380/",
  "@type": ["ComputerLanguage", "SoftwareApplication"],
  "name": "Python 3.8.0",
  "version": "3.8.0"
}

A contextual entity representing a SoftwareApplication or ComputerLanguage MUST have a name, url and version, which should indicate a known version the workflow/script was developed or tested with. alternateName MAY be provided if there is a shorter colloquial name, for instance “R” instead of “The R Project for Statistical Computing”.

It is possible to indicate steps that are executed as part of an Workflow or Script, by using hasPart to relate additional SoftwareApplication or nested SoftwareSourceCode contextual entities:

{
    "@id": "workflow/analyze.cwl",  
    "@type": ["File", "SoftwareSourceCode", "Workflow"],
    "name": "CWL workflow to analyze CSV and make PNG",
    "programmingLanguage": {"@id": "https://w3id.org/cwl/v1.1/"},
    "hasPart": [
      {"@id": "scripts/analyse_csv.py"},
      {"@id": "https://www.imagemagick.org/"},
    ]
}

Workflow diagram/sketch

It can be beneficial to show a diagram or sketch to explain the script/workflow. This may have been generated from a workflow management system, or drawn manually as a diagram. This diagram MAY be included as an ImageObject which is about the SoftwareSourceCode. The @type parameter SHOULD be an array to also include WorkflowSketch to indicate that this is an image that represent a sketch or diagram of the workflow.

{
  "@id": "workflow/workflow.svg",
  "@type": ["File", "ImageObject", "WorkflowSketch"],
  "encodingFormat":  "image/svg+xml",
  "name": "Diagram of RetroPath2.0 workflow",
  "about": {"@id": "workflow/workflow.knime"}
}

The image file format SHOULD be indicated with encodingFormat using an IANA registered media type like image/svg+xml or image/png. Additionally a reference to Pronom identifier SHOULD be provided, which MAY be described as an additional contextual entity to give human-readable name to the format:

{
  "@id": "workflow/workflow.svg",
  "@type": ["File", "ImageObject", "WorkflowSketch"],
  "encodingFormat":  ["image/svg+xml"],
  "description": "Diagram of RetroPath2.0 workflow",
  "about": {"@id": "workflow/workflow.knime"}
},

A Sketch may still be provided even if there is no programmatic SoftwareSourceCode that can be executed (e.g. because the workflow was done by hand). In this case the sketch itself is a proxy for the workflow and SHOULD have @type of Workflow and an about property referring to the RO-Crate dataset as a whole (assuming the RO-Crate represents the outcome of a single workflow), or to other Data Entities otherwise:

{
  "@id": "workflow/workflow.svg",
  "@type": ["File", "ImageObject", "WorkflowSketch", "Workflow"],
  "encodingFormat":  ["image/svg+xml"],
  "name": "Diagram of an ad hoc workflow",
  "about": {"@id": "./"}
}
 

Extra metadata such as Exif

Schema.org has a generic extension mechanism for encoding adding arbitrary properties and values which are not available as Schema.org properties. An example of of this is the Schema.org recommended way (see example 2) of including Exif technical image metadata.

To include EXIF, or other data which can be encoded as property/value pairs, add an array of references to Anonymous Entities which encode each property. This example shows one property of several hundred.

{
      "@id": "pics/2017-06-11%2012.56.14.jpg",
      "@type": ["File", "ImageObject"],
      "contentSize": "5114778",
      "author": {
        "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-944X"
      },
      "description": "Depicts a fence at a disused motor racing venue with the front part of a slightly out of focus black dog in the foreground.",
      "encodingFormat": "image/jpeg",
      "exifData": [
        {
          "@id": "#2eb90b09-a8b8-4946-805b-8cba077a7137"
        },
        {
          "@id": "#c2521494-9b94-4b23-a713-6b281f540823"
        },
      ]

{
      "@id": "#c2521494-9b94-4b23-a713-6b281f540823",
      "@type": "PropertyValue",
      "name": "InternalSerialNumber",
      "value": "4102011002108002               "
    },

Places

To associate a Data Entity with a Contextual Entity representing a geographical location or region the entity SHOULD have a property of contentLocation with a value of type Place.

This example shows how to define a place, using a geonames ID:

{
  "@id": "http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/",
  "@type": "Place",
  "description": "Catalina Park is a disused motor racing venue, located at Katoomba ...",
  "geo": {
    "@id": "#b4168a98-8534-4c6d-a568-64a55157b656"
  },
  "identifier": "http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/",
  "uri": "https://www.geonames.org/8152662/catalina-park.html",
  "name": "Catalina Park"
},

Tip: To find the @id and identifier corresponding to a GeoNames HTML page like https://www.geonames.org/8152662/catalina-park.html click it’s .rdf button to find the identifier http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/ referred from https://sws.geonames.org/8152662/about.rdf:

<gn:Feature rdf:about="http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/">
<!--... -->

The place has a geo property, referencing an Contextual Entity of @type GeoCoordinates:

{
  "@id": "#b4168a98-8534-4c6d-a568-64a55157b656",
  "@type": "GeoCoordinates",
  "latitude": "-33.7152",
  "longitude": "150.30119",
  "name": "Latitude: -33.7152 Longitude: 150.30119"
},

The GeoCoordinates item SHOULD have a human readable name, which is used in generating the ro-crate-preview.html file.

And the place is referenced from the contentLocation property of the dataset.

{
  "@id": "./",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "outputOf": "RO-Crate",
  "contact": {
    "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-944X"
  },
  "contentLocation": {
    "@id": "http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/",
  }
}
{
  "@id": "http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/",
  "name": "Catalina Park",
}

Place MAY use any of the resources available in Schema.org to describe places. Future profiles of RO-Crate may mandate the use of a subset of these. Any directory or file or Contextual Entity may be geo-located. For example this file:

{
  "@id": "pics/19093074_10155469333581584_5707039334816454031_o.jpg",
  "@type": "File",
  "contentLocation": {
    "@id": "http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/"
  },
  "contentSize": "132765",
  "author": {
    "@id": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3545-944X"
  },

Subjects & keywords

Subject properties (equivalent to a Dublin Core Subject) on RO-Crate or a data entity MUST use the about property.

Keyword properties MUST use keywords. Note that by schema.org convention, keywords are given as a single JSON string, with individual keywords separated by commas.

{
  "keywords": "Gibraltar, Spain, British Overseas Territory, city, map",
  "about": { "@id": "http://dbpedia.org/resource/Gibraltar" },
}

Time

To describe the time period which a RO-Crate Data Entity (or the RO-Crate itself) is about, use temporalCoverage:

{
  "@id": "photos/",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "name": "Photos of Gibraltar from 1950 till 1975",
  "about": {"@id": "http://dbpedia.org/resource/Gibraltar"},
  "temporalCoverage": "1950/1975"
}

Digital Library and Repository content

To describe an export from a Digital Library or repository system, RO-Crate uses the Portland Common Data Model (PCDM). A Contextual Entity from a repository, representing an abstract entity such as a person, or a work, or a place SHOULD have a@type of RepositoryObject, in addition to any other types. Objects MAY be grouped together in RepositoryCollections with hasMember pointing to the the RepositoryObject. The keys RepositoryObject and RepositoryCollection were chosen to avoid collision between the terms Collection and Object with other vocabularies.

NOTE: PCDM specifies that Files should have only technical metadata, not descriptive metadata, which is not a restriction in RO-Crate. If the RO-Crate is to be imported into a strict PCDM repository, modeling of object/file relationships will be necessary.

For example, this data is exported from an Omeka repository:

{
   "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/collections/6",
   "@type": "RepositoryCollection",
   "title":  "Project Materials",   
   "description": [
      "Materials associated with the project, including fliers seeking participants, lists of sources and question outline.   "
   ],
   "publisher": {"@id": "University of Western Sydney"},
   "rights": "Copyright University of Western Sydney 2015",
   "hasMember": [
      {
         "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/items/166"
      },
      {
         "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/items/167"
      },
      {
         "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/items/168"
      },
      {
         "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/items/169"
      }
   ]
},
{
   "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/items/166",
   "@type": "RepositoryObject",
   "title": [
      "Western Sydney Women's Oral History Project: Flier (illustrated)"
   ],
   "description": [
      "Flier (illustrated) seeking participants for the project."
   ],
   "publisher": { "@id": "https://westernsydney.edu.au"},
   "rights": "Copyright University of Western Sydney 2015",
   "originalFormat": "Paper",
   "identifier": "FTF_flier_illust"
   ],
   "rightsHolder": [
      "Western Sydney University"
   ],
   "license": { 
     "@id": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/"
   },
   "hasFile": [
      {
         "@id": "content/166/original_eece70f73bf8979c0bcfb97065948531.pdf"
      },
     ...
   ]
},
{
   "@type": "File",
   "@id": "content/166/original_eece70f73bf8979c0bcfb97065948531.pdf"
}

Thumbnails

A File or any other item MAY have a thumbnail property which references another file.

For example, the below RepositoryObject is related to four files which are all versions of the same image (via hasFile) one of which is a thumbnail. The thumbnail MUST be included in the RO-Crate.

If thumbnails are incidental to the data set, they need not be referenced by hasPart or hasFile relationships. but must be in the BagIt manifest if in a Bagged RO-Crate.

{
  "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/items/383",
  "@type": [
    "RepositoryObject",
    "Image"
  ],
  "identifier": [
    "ftf_photo_stapleton1"
  ],
  "interviewee": [
    {
      "@id": "https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/api/items/595",
    }
  ],
  "description": [
    "Photo of Eugenie Stapleton inside her home"
  ],
  "license": [
    "Content in the Western Sydney Women's Oral History Project: From farms to freeways collection is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY 3.0 AU licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/)."
  ],
  "publisher": [
    "University of Western Sydney"
  ],
  "hasFile": [
    {
      "@id": "files/383/original_c0f1189ec13ca936e8f556161663d4ba.jpg"
    },
    {
      "@id": "files/383/fullsize_c0f1189ec13ca936e8f556161663d4ba.jpg"
    },
    {
      "@id": "files/383/thumbnail_c0f1189ec13ca936e8f556161663d4ba.jpg"
    },
    {
      "@id": "files/383/square_thumbnail_c0f1189ec13ca936e8f556161663d4ba.jpg"
    }
  ],
  "thumbnail": [
    {
      "@id": "files/383/thumbnail_c0f1189ec13ca936e8f556161663d4ba.jpg"
    }
  ],
  "name": [
    "Photo of Eugenie Stapleton 1"
  ],
  "relatedLink": [
    "<a href=\"https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/items/show/512\">Audio recording of interview with Eugenie Stapleton</a><br /><a href=\"https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/items/show/454\">Transcript of interview with Eugenie Stapleton</a> <br /><a href=\"https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/items/show/384\">Photo of Eugenie Stapleton 2</a><br /><a href=\"https://omeka.uws.edu.au/farmstofreeways/items/show/464\">Letter from Eugenie Stapleton</a>"
  ],
  "copyrightHolder": [
    { "@id": "https://westernsydney.edu.au"}
  ],
  "copyright": [
    "Copyright University of Western Sydney 2015"
  ]
},
{
  "@type": "File",
  "@id": "files/384/original_2ebbe681aa6ec138776343974ce8a3dd.jpg"
},
{
  "@type": "File",
  "@id": "files/384/fullsize_2ebbe681aa6ec138776343974ce8a3dd.jpg"
},
{
  "@type": "File",
  "@id": "files/384/thumbnail_2ebbe681aa6ec138776343974ce8a3dd.jpg"
},
{
  "@type": "File",
  "@id": "files/384/square_thumbnail_2ebbe681aa6ec138776343974ce8a3dd.jpg"
},

 

APPENDIX: RO-Crate JSON-LD

It is not necessary to use JSON-LD tooling to generate or parse the RO-Crate Metadata File, although they may make it easier to conform to this specification, e.g. handling relative URIs. It is RECOMMENDED to use JSON tooling to handle JSON syntax and escaping rules.

This appendix shows a brief JSON-LD introduction for complying with the RO-Crate Metadata File requirements.

The below example shows the overall structure of a flattened, compacted ro-crate-metadata.jsonld where @context refers to the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context, while @graph is a flat list of the entities that constitute this RO-Crate.

{ "@context": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context",
  "@graph": [

    {
      "@type": "CreativeWork",
      "@id": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
      "conformsTo": {"@id": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0"},
      "about": {"@id": "./"},
      "description": "RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor (this file)"
    },
    { 
      "@id": "./",
      "@type": "Dataset",
      "name": "Example RO-Crate",
      "description": "The RO-Crate Root Data Entity",
      "hasPart": [
        {"@id": "data1.txt"},
        {"@id": "data2.txt"}
      ]
    },


    { 
      "@id": "data1.txt",
      "@type": "File",
      "description": "One of hopefully many Data Entities",
      "author": {"@id": "#alice"},
      "contentLocation":  {"@id": "http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/"}
    },
    { 
      "@id": "data2.txt",
      "@type": "File"
    },

    {
      "@id": "#alice",
      "@type": "Person",
      "name": "Alice",
      "description": "One of hopefully many Contextual Entities"
    },
    {
      "@id": "http://sws.geonames.org/8152662/",
      "@type": "Place",
      "name": "Catalina Park"
    }
 ]
}

Note: entities above have been shortened for brevity, see their individual sections elsewhere in this specification.

The order of the @graph list is not significant. Above we see that the RO-Crate JSON-LD graph contain the RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor, the Root Data Entity, any Data Entities and any Contextual Entities.

Describing entities in JSON-LD

Properties of an entity can refer to another URL or entity by using the form {"@id": "uri-reference"} as in the example above, where the author property in the File entity refer to the Person entity, identified as #alice.

Identifiers in @id SHOULD be either a valid absolute URIs like http://example.com/, or an URI references URI paths relative to the RO-Crate root directory. Care must be taken to express any relative paths using / separator and escape special characters like space (%20). As JSON-LD supports IRIs, international characters in identifiers SHOULD be encoded in UTF-8 rather than %-escaped.

Because the RO-Crate JSON-LD is flattened, all described entities must be direct children of the @graph element rather than being nested under another property or list.

If no obvious identifier is available for a contextual entity, an identifier local to the RO-Crate Metadata File can be generated, for instance {"@id": "#alice"} or {"@id": "#ac0bd781-7d91-4cdf-b2ad-7305921c7650"}. Although it is RECOMMENDED to use #-based local identifiers, identifiers in @id MAY alternatively be a blank node identifier (e.g. _:alice).

Multiple values and references can be represented using JSON arrays, as exemplified in hasPart above, however as the RO-Crate JSON-LD is in compacted form any single-element arrays like "author": [{"@id": "#alice"}] SHOULD be unpacked to a single value like "author": {"@id": "#alice"}.

RO-Crate JSON-LD Context

The main purpose of the @context is to relate JSON property keys and @type references to their Linked Data identifiers, which in RO-Crate is based primarily on http://schema.org/ URIs.

In other uses of JSON-LD the context may perform more automatic or detailed mapping, but the RO-Crate JSON-LD context is deliberately flat, listing every property and type.

To find the full description of a particular property or type, follow its URI from the context. For instance, we can find within the context https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context that author above is mapped to http://schema.org/author:

   "author": "http://schema.org/author",

The RO-Crate JSON-LD Context may either be set by reference to https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context, or by value (merging the two documents).

Consider the below (simplified) example of by reference using a versioned permalink:

{ "@context": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context",
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@id": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
      "@type": "CreativeWork",
      "description": "RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor (this file)",
      "conformsTo": {"@id": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0"},
      "about": {"@id": "./"}
    }
  ]
}

The above is equivalent to this JSON-LD using an embedded context, by adding the subset of corresponding keys from the external @context:

{ "@context": {
      "CreativeWork": "http://schema.org/CreativeWork",
      "about": "http://schema.org/about",
      "description": "http://schema.org/description",
      "conformsTo": "http://purl.org/dc/terms/conformsTo",
      "about": "http://schema.org/about"
  },
  "@graph": [
    {
      "@id": "ro-crate-metadata.jsonld",
      "@type": "CreativeWork",
      "description": "RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor (this file)",
      "conformsTo": {"@id": "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0"},
      "about": {"@id": "./"}
    }
  ]
}

While the second form is more verbose, one advantage is that it is “archivable” as it does not require Internet access for retrieving the @context permalink. Tools consuming or archiving RO-Crate MAY replace by-reference @context URIs with an embedded context by using version-specific hard-coded contexts, see https://github.com/ResearchObject/ro-crate/releases

To check which RO-Crate version is used (in terms of properties and types expected), clients SHOULD check the property conformsTo on the RO-Crate Metadata File Descriptor rather than the value of @context.

RO-Crate consumers SHOULD NOT do the opposite substitution from an embedded context, but MAY use the JSON-LD flattening algorithm with compaction to a referenced RO-Crate JSON-LD context.

Tip: The JSON-LD flattening & compaction algorithms can be used to rewrite to a different @context, e.g. to http://schema.org or a different version of the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context.

RO-Crate JSON-LD Media type

The media type for ro-crate-metadata.jsonld will, when following this specification, comply with the flattened/compacted JSON-LD profiles as well as https://w3id.org/ro/crate, which may be indicated in a HTTP response as:

    HEAD http://example.com/ro-123/ro-crate-metadata.jsonld HTTP/1.1

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Content-Type: application/ld+json; profile="http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#flattened http://www.w3.org/ns/json-ld#compacted https://w3id.org/ro/crate"

Extending RO-Crate

To extend RO-Crate, implementers SHOULD try to use existing http://schema.org/ properties and classes and MAY use terms from other vocabularies and ontologies when this is not possible.

The terms (properties and classes) used SHOULD be added as keys to the @context in the RO-Crate JSON-LD (if not present). To avoid duplicating the RO-Crate JSON-LD Context the @context: [] array form SHOULD be used as shown below.

URIs in the @context SHOULD resolve to a useful human readable page. Where this is not possible - for example if the URI resolves to an RDF ontology file, a human-readable URI SHOULD be provided using a sameAs description.

For example. The @id URI http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/interviewee from the BIBO ontology ontology itends to resolve to an ontology file, which is not useful for humans, however the HTML section http://neologism.ecs.soton.ac.uk/bibo.html#interviewee is human-readable.

{
  "@context": [ 
    "https://w3id.org/ro/crate/1.0/context",
    {"interviewee": "http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/interviewee"},
  ],
  "@graph": [
  {
      "@id": "http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/interviewee",
      "sameAs": "http://neologism.ecs.soton.ac.uk/bibo.html#interviewee",
      "@type": "Thing"
  }
 ]
}

When generating the RO-Crate Website from RO-Crate JSON-LD, the code MUST use a sameAs URI (if present) as a target for an explanatory link for the term instead of the Linked Data URI supplied in the @context.

Where there is no RDF ontology available, then implementors SHOULD attempt to provide context by creating stable web-accessible URIs to document properties and classes, for example, by linking to page describing an XML element or attribute from an XML schema, pending the publication of a formal ontology.

APPENDIX: Implementation notes

Combining with other packaging schemes

RO-Crates may co-exist with other packaging schemes, such as BagIt using two general approaches; either (a) adding RO-Crate into a package as part of the payload or (b) wrapping another kind of package. Examples using BagIt follow.

BagIt is described in RFC 8493:

[BagIt is] … a set of hierarchical file layout conventions for storage and transfer of arbitrary digital content. A “bag” has just enough structure to enclose descriptive metadata “tags” and a file “payload” but does not require knowledge of the payload’s internal semantics. This BagIt format is suitable for reliable storage and transfer.

BagIt and RO-Crate have largely separate concerns - RO-Crate is focussed on rich metadata, the semantics of data, while BagIt is about reliable transfer.

Example of adding RO-Crate to Bagit

RO-Crate can be combined with BagIt simply by placing the RO-Crate files in the BagIt payload (data/) directory.

<RO-Crate root directory>/
  |   bagit.txt                 # As per BagIt specification
  |   bag-info.txt              # As per BagIt specification
  |   manifest-<algorithm>.txt  # As per BagIt specification
  |   fetch.txt                 # Optional, per BagIt Specification
  |   data/
      |   ro-crate-metadata.jsonld  # RO-Crate Metadata File MUST be present
      |   ro-crate-preview.html     # RO-Crate Website homepage MAY be present
      |   ro-crate-preview_files/   # MAY be present
      |     [payload files and directories]  # 1 or more SHOULD be present

Example of wrapping a BagIt bag in an RO-Crate

Alternatively, an RO-Crate can wrap a BagIt bag, so that the RO-Crate metadata is outside of the bag directory and can be changed without changing the payload’s checksums.

<RO-Crate root directory>/
  |   ro-crate-metadata.jsonld  # RO-Crate Metadata File MUST be present
  |   ro-crate-preview.html     # RO-Crate Website homepage MAY be present
  |   ro-crate-preview_files/   # MAY be present
  |   bag/                      # "Wrapped" bag - could have any name
  |      bagit.txt                 # As per BagIt specification
  |      bag-info.txt              # As per BagIt specification
  |      manifest-<algorithm>.txt  # As per BagIt specification
  |      fetch.txt                 # Optional, per BagIt Specification
  |      data/
  |         [payload files and directories]  # 1 or more SHOULD be present
  |          example.txt 

A Data Entity describing example.txt would have an @id of bag/data/example.txt:

{
  "@id": "bag/data/example.txt",
  "name": "Example file"
}

Repository-specific identifiers

Root Data Entities MAY also have additional repository specific identifiers, described using Contextual Entities using a PropertyValue, with a name that identifies the repository and the identifier as a value. The same identifier MAY be used in multiple different repositories and effectively namespaced using the name of the ProperyValue.

{
  "@id": "./",
  "@type": "Dataset",
  "identifier": ["https://doi.org/10.4225/59/59672c09f4a4b", {"@id": "_:localid:my-repo:my-id"}, {"@id": "_:localid:other-repo:https://doi.org/10.4225/59/59672c09f4a4b"}]
}

 {
   "@id": "_:localid:my-repo:my-id",
   "@type": "PropertyValue",
   "name": "my-repo",
   "value": "my-id"
 }

  {
   "@id": "_:localid:other-repo:https://doi.org/10.4225/59/59672c09f4a4b",
   "@type": "PropertyValue",
   "name": "other-repo",
   "value": "https://doi.org/10.4225/59/59672c09f4a4b"
 }

RO-Crate Metadata Specification 1.0

Table of contents

Introduction & definition of an RO-Crate

Terminology

Linked Data conventions

RO-Crate Structure

RO-Crate Metadata File (ro-crate-metadata.jsonld)

RO-Crate Website (ro-crate-preview.html and ro-crate-preview_files/)

Payload files and directories

RO-Crates SHOULD be self-describing and self-contained

RO-Crate Metadata

RO-Crate uses Linked Data principles

Base metadata standard for RO-Crate: Schema.org

Differences from schema.org

Additional metadata standards

Summary of Coverage

Future coverage

Recommended Identifiers

Core Metadata for the Root Data Entity

Direct properties of the Root Data Entity

Examples of referencing Data Entities (files and folders) from the Root Data Entity

Example linking to a file and folders

Adding detailed descriptions of encodings

Core Metadata for Data Entities

File Data Entity

Directory File Entity

Representing Contextual Entities

People

Organizations as values

More detail on ContactPoint

Publications via citation property

Publisher

Funding and grants

Licensing, Access control and copyright

Metadata license

Provenance: Equipment used to create files

Provenance: Software used to create files

Provenance: Changes to RO-Crates

Workflows and scripts

Workflow diagram/sketch

Extra metadata such as Exif

Places

Subjects & keywords

Time

Digital Library and Repository content

Thumbnails

APPENDIX: RO-Crate JSON-LD

Describing entities in JSON-LD

RO-Crate JSON-LD Context

RO-Crate JSON-LD Media type

Extending RO-Crate

APPENDIX: Implementation notes

Combining with other packaging schemes

Example of adding RO-Crate to Bagit

Example of wrapping a BagIt bag in an RO-Crate

Repository-specific identifiers

RO-Crate Metadata File (`ro-crate-metadata.jsonld`)

RO-Crate Website (`ro-crate-preview.html` and `ro-crate-preview_files/`)