Result description
ROHub is an RO-Crate management platform that provides a holistic solution for the storage, lifecycle management and preservation of scientific investigations, campaigns and operational processes via research objects. It makes these resources available to others, allows to publish and release them through a DOI, and allows to discover and reuse pre-existing scientific knowledge. ROHub provides the backbone to a wealth of RO centric applications and interfaces across different scientific communities. ROHub implements and uses the RO-Crate as the standard format for specification as the standard format for serialising and exchanging research objects. RO-Crate is an open, community driven data package specification to describe all kinds of research data and related resources, within and outside the package. It uses JSON-LD to express this metadata using linked data, describing the associated research resources and contextual entities such as people, organizations, software and equipment, in a user and machine-readable format. ROHub integrates various RO-added value services and EOSC services, including FAIROs, a fair assessment service for RO-Crates, the RO semantic enrichment service that automatically extracts metadata from RO-Crate contents, and advanced analytics services (e.g., claim analysis, challenges and solution extraction, etc.)
Problem addressed
The SRIA goal “FAIR metrics and conformance” focuses on enabling measurable compliance with the FAIR principles and supporting infrastructures that allow research outputs to be evaluated, validated, and improved in terms of their FAIRness. The ROHub platform directly contributes to this goal by operationalising FAIR assessment and improvement mechanisms for complex research artefacts represented as Research Objects.
ROHub adopts RO-Crate as a machine-actionable representation of Research Objects, enabling structured, linked-data descriptions of datasets, workflows, software, instruments, and contextual entities such as organisations and people. By serialising metadata in JSON-LD using shared vocabularies, ROHub ensures that research artefacts are described in a semantically explicit, interoperable format that supports automated interpretation and reuse.
The platform integrates FAIROs, a service that evaluates the FAIRness of RO-Crates and their contained resources using established FAIR assessment tools. FAIROs aggregates metrics from community tools such as F-UJI for datasets and FOOPS! for ontologies, and complements them with additional evaluators tailored for software, workflows, and Research Object metadata. This allows the generation of comprehensive FAIR metrics for complex research packages rather than individual datasets only, addressing a key gap in FAIR evaluation.
In addition, ROHub’s semantic enrichment services automatically extract metadata and domain terms from the contents of Research Objects, improving metadata completeness and discoverability. Together, these capabilities provide an integrated environment where research outputs can be created, enriched, assessed, and continuously improved for FAIR conformance, supporting the broader EOSC and SRIA objective of measurable, machine-actionable FAIR digital resources.
Who can use the result
Researchers and research institutionsTimeline
Within the FAIR2Adapt, the project will exploit its results by integrating and onboarding ROHub as a federated service in EOSC Nodes, initially through the Polish EOSC Node. The onboarding will enable ROHub to operate as an EOSC-compatible service supporting the creation, management, publication, and preservation of FAIR Digital Objects represented as RO-Crates. The exploitation plan will focus on three main activities. First, the project will deploy and operate ROHub within the EOSC-PL infrastructure, ensuring compliance with EOSC Federation requirements for service onboarding, authentication, and interoperability. This will allow research communities to create and publish Research Objects through EOSC-connected infrastructure, including persistent identifiers and FAIR assessment via integrated services such as FAIROs. Second, the project will enable integration with EOSC catalogues and interoperability frameworks, allowing ROHub-hosted Research Objects to be discoverable through EOSC discovery services and to interoperate with other EOSC services and data infrastructures. Third, the project will support community uptake and long-term sustainability by promoting the use of ROHub across climate-adaptation and environmental research communities involved in FAIR2Adapt. Training activities, documentation, and community pilots will demonstrate how Research Objects can support reproducibility, knowledge reuse, and FAIR-by-design research workflows. After the project, the service will remain operational within EOSC Nodes, ensuring long-term sustainability, operational continuity, and integration into the broader EOSC service ecosystemHow to use the result
Type of result
