In the latest edition of the Australian Describo newsletter one can read about the ELKH ARP Aroma developments. The aim of the ELKH ARP project is to create a software platform to store, archive and share research data. The ARP software system (ARP platform) is designed and created by SZTAKI DSD Department of Distributed Systems. The newly developed AROMA extension, that adds a new data packaging solution to the already existing solution, has been developed to this very system and is based on the Describo software.
The ELKH ARP system handles data packages in compliance with the FAIR Data Principles. The data packages, that originate from research data, are files and their related metadata. The central element of the ARP project is the Harvard Dataverse data repository, that enables the storage and management of these data packages. This service is already available to the Hungarian research community under the name Concorda.
In the project AROMA (ARP RO-Crate Manager) has been implemented as a system component, an additional service that extends the Dataverse system with a new, RO-Crate -based data packaging solution. RO-Crate (Research Object Crate) specification is a recommendation, quasi standard prepared by the research data community. An RO-Crate package stores files and their descriptive metadata as one, all in one package. Metadata description is made using the standard JSON-LD format, and by applying metadata schemas that adapt to researchers’ needs, the package can be even more described in a FAIR-compatible way. If data is packaged as RO-Crate and the appropriate international metadata schemas are applied, it makes it more simple to transfer, export, import research data, or to understand and use them in other systems.
AROMA (ARP RO-Crate Manager) system
As part of the ARP project, we complemented the Dataverse system so that it now supports the export and import of RO-Crate packages, and the integration of AROMA and Dataverse systems has also been implemented. With the help of the whole system, researchers could add metadata not only via the tools offered by the Dataverse system, but they could describe data in more details, in case they wish to store or publish a Dataverse data package as an RO-Crate package.
The AROMA system is created based on the open source Describo software. Describo is a webcomponent to manage RO-Crates. It is developed initially by the University of Queensland (Australia), and SZTAKI is an active contributor of the project. Describo in itself is used to edit RO-Crate metadata descriptors, the ro-crate-metadata.json files. AROMA extends it with additional data management services that fit the ARP platform system. The AROMA system services are available directly within Dataverse, so metadata added in Dataverse and the additional RO-Crate metadata could be managed simultaneously.