Research Objects Crate (RO-Crate)
Research publications, data, code and more bundled into a shareable, cite-able, reusable format
Research Object is an approach to the publication, and exchange of scholarly information on the Web.
Research Objects aim to improve reuse and reproducibility by:
- Supporting the publication of more than just PDFs, making data, code, and other resources first class citizens of scholarship
- Recognizing that there is often a need to publish collections of these resources together as one shareable, cite-able resource.
- Enriching these resources and collections with any and all additional information required to make research reusable, and reproducible!
Research Object Crate (RO-Crate)
RO-Crate is the recommended way to package and describe Research Objects. This is a community effort to establish a lightweight approach to packaging research data with their metadata. RO-Crate is based on schema.org annotations in JSON-LD, and aims to make best-practice in formal metadata description accessible and practical for use in a wider variety of situations, from an individual researcher working with a folder of data, to large data-intensive computational research environments.
RO-Crate is used in several of our projects and products:
- BioDT – as a mechanism to publish FAIR Computational Workflows as FAIR Digital Objects and for representing digital twins
- BioExcel – As a way to capture Canonical Workflow Building Blocks https://doi.org/10.1162/dint_a_00135
- BY-COVID – As a way to package rich metadata and provenance (e.g. describe a vaccine effectiveness study) together with the common provenance model https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5093125
- ELIXIR – As part of GA4GH cloud activities
- WorkflowHub – as storage format for workflows and their dependencies, using the Workflow RO-Crate profile
- EOSC-Life – as exchange unit with services like LifeMonitor using the Workflow Testing Crate profile https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4605654
- FAIR-IMPACT – to help package semantic artefacts and their crosswalk mappings, published with FAIR Signposting.
- SEEK – being developed as an update to the previous Research Object Bundle export
- Synthesys+ – recording workflow outputs from Galaxy as a Workflow Run Crate profile and working with FAIR Digital Objects https://doi.org/10.1162/dint_a_00134
- EuroScienceGateway – adding Workflow Run Crate support to Galaxy and publishing these as FAIR Digital Objects
- TRE-FX and HDR UK QQ2 – to build the Five Safe RO-Crate profile for execution workflows on Trusted Research Environment
- EVERSE – as the exchange mechanism for the workflow execution service WfExS
- EOSC-ENRTUST – using the Five Safe RO-Crate profile as part of workflow processing
Find out more about Research Objects Crate (RO-Crate).