CrestMetadata

CrestMetadata is a metadata schema used within the Crest ecosystem to describe datasets, results, and workflows produced by Crest tools. It provides a standardized way to capture provenance, licensing, and descriptive information to support discovery, reproducibility, and interoperability across Crest-enabled projects.

A CrestMetadata document typically includes a unique resource identifier, the Crest software version that generated the artifact, a creation timestamp, and one or more creators. It may also contain a human‑readable description, licensing terms, provenance data tracing data origins, references to source assets, cryptographic checksums, size, and format or media type. The schema supports required and optional fields and allows project-specific extensions through a flexible metadata map.

Serialization and validation: CrestMetadata records are designed to be serialized in multiple formats, commonly JSON or YAML, with a recommended canonical form for interchange. Validation tools verify conformance to the schema, enabling automated checks for completeness, consistency, and license compliance.

Usage and interoperability: The metadata standard improves asset discovery, data lineage auditing, and reproducibility. Crest-aware tools rely on CrestMetadata to index assets, enforce provenance constraints, and surface metadata to repositories and registries. By providing a common vocabulary, it facilitates interoperability with general metadata practices and external data-management systems.

Governance and history: CrestMetadata is maintained by the Crest project and has evolved through several revisions to reflect changes in data management practices and tool capabilities. Adoption across Crest workflows is encouraged to strengthen data stewardship and reproducible research.