Is the @type property required?

[Code42Cate]

Hey everyone,

I've been reading the RO-Crate 1.1 specification and was wondering if the @type property is required on every entity? I can not find anything clearly stating this, I also looked into the JSON-LD standard. No examples in the specification have an entity without @type, but I found some entities in ROHub crates that do not have them. Thank you for your help :)

Cheers, Jonas

[stain]

Hi, good question! The @type property is not required by JSON-LD itself, but it is convention to include it, particularly when using schema.org.

Likewise in RO-Crate we have implied the @type is to be used on every entity, but has not stated that as an explicit rule.

I would suggest we modify this for RO-Crate 1.2 to be explicit, so that every entity has at least @type and SHOULD have name. If no appropriate type is available, you can use Thing (anything) or WebPage (if you're pointing to a page).

[Code42Cate]

Thanks for the answer:) That's what I thought and implemented, would love to see it be explicitly mentioned in 1.2!

[stain]

@type requirement now included in RO-Crate 1.2:
https://www.researchobject.org/ro-crate/specification/1.2-DRAFT/metadata.html#common-principles-for-ro-crate-entities