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The NIST Extensible Resource Data Model (NERDm): JSON schemas for rich description of data resources

The NIST Extensible Resource Data Model (NERDm) is a set of schemas for encoding in JSON format metadata
that describe digital resources. The variety of digital resources it can describe includes not only
digital data sets and collections, but also software, digital services, web sites and portals, and
digital twins. It was created to serve as the internal metadata format used by the NIST Public Data
Repository and Science Portal to drive rich presentations on the web and to enable discovery; however, it
was also designed to enable programmatic access to resources and their metadata by external users.
Interoperability was also a key design aim: the schemas are defined using the JSON Schema standard,
metadata are encoded as JSON-LD, and their semantics are tied to community ontologies, with an emphasis
on DCAT and the US federal Project Open Data (POD) models. Finally, extensibility is also central to its
design: the schemas are composed of a central core schema and various extension schemas. New extensions
to support richer metadata concepts can be added over time without breaking existing applications.

Validation is central to NERDm's extensibility model. Consuming applications should be able to choose
which metadata extensions they care to support and ignore terms and extensions they don't support.
Furthermore, they should not fail when a NERDm document leverages extensions they don't recognize, even
when on-the-fly validation is required. To support this flexibility, the NERDm framework allows
documents to declare what extensions are being used and where. We have developed an optional extension
to the standard JSON Schema validation (see ejsonschema below) to support flexible validation: while a
standard JSON Schema validater can validate a NERDm document against the NERDm core schema, our extension
will validate a NERDm document against any recognized extensions and ignore those that are not
recognized.

The NERDm data model is based around the concept of resource, semantically equivalent to a schema.org
Resource, and as in schema.org, there can be different types of resources, such as data sets and
software. A NERDm document indicates what types the resource qualifies as via the JSON-LD "@type"
property. All NERDm Resources are described by metadata terms from the core NERDm schema; however,
different resource types can be described by additional metadata properties (often drawing on particular
NERDm extension schemas). A Resource contains Components of various types (including
DCAT-defined Distributions) that are considered part of the Resource; specifically, these can include downloadable data files, hierachical data
collecitons, links to web sites (like software repositories), software tools, or other NERDm Resources.
Through the NERDm extension system, domain-specific metadata can be included at either the resource or
component level. The direct semantic and syntactic connections to the DCAT, POD, and schema.org schemas
is intended to ensure unambiguous conversion of NERDm documents into those schemas.

As of this writing, the Core NERDm schema and its framework stands at version 0.7 and is compatible with
the "draft-04" version of JSON Schema. Version 1.0 is projected to be released in 2025. In that
release, the NERDm schemas will be updated to the "draft2020" version of JSON Schema. Other improvements
will include stronger support for RDF and the Linked Data Platform through its support of JSON-LD.

About this Dataset

Updated: 2026-09-19
Metadata Last Updated: 2017-09-02 00:00:00
Date Created: N/A
Data Provided by:
Dataset Owner: N/A

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Table representation of structured data
Title The NIST Extensible Resource Data Model (NERDm): JSON schemas for rich description of data resources
Description The NIST Extensible Resource Data Model (NERDm) is a set of schemas for encoding in JSON format metadata that describe digital resources. The variety of digital resources it can describe includes not only digital data sets and collections, but also software, digital services, web sites and portals, and digital twins. It was created to serve as the internal metadata format used by the NIST Public Data Repository and Science Portal to drive rich presentations on the web and to enable discovery; however, it was also designed to enable programmatic access to resources and their metadata by external users. Interoperability was also a key design aim: the schemas are defined using the JSON Schema standard, metadata are encoded as JSON-LD, and their semantics are tied to community ontologies, with an emphasis on DCAT and the US federal Project Open Data (POD) models. Finally, extensibility is also central to its design: the schemas are composed of a central core schema and various extension schemas. New extensions to support richer metadata concepts can be added over time without breaking existing applications. Validation is central to NERDm's extensibility model. Consuming applications should be able to choose which metadata extensions they care to support and ignore terms and extensions they don't support. Furthermore, they should not fail when a NERDm document leverages extensions they don't recognize, even when on-the-fly validation is required. To support this flexibility, the NERDm framework allows documents to declare what extensions are being used and where. We have developed an optional extension to the standard JSON Schema validation (see ejsonschema below) to support flexible validation: while a standard JSON Schema validater can validate a NERDm document against the NERDm core schema, our extension will validate a NERDm document against any recognized extensions and ignore those that are not recognized. The NERDm data model is based around the concept of resource, semantically equivalent to a schema.org Resource, and as in schema.org, there can be different types of resources, such as data sets and software. A NERDm document indicates what types the resource qualifies as via the JSON-LD "@type" property. All NERDm Resources are described by metadata terms from the core NERDm schema; however, different resource types can be described by additional metadata properties (often drawing on particular NERDm extension schemas). A Resource contains Components of various types (including DCAT-defined Distributions) that are considered part of the Resource; specifically, these can include downloadable data files, hierachical data collecitons, links to web sites (like software repositories), software tools, or other NERDm Resources. Through the NERDm extension system, domain-specific metadata can be included at either the resource or component level. The direct semantic and syntactic connections to the DCAT, POD, and schema.org schemas is intended to ensure unambiguous conversion of NERDm documents into those schemas. As of this writing, the Core NERDm schema and its framework stands at version 0.7 and is compatible with the "draft-04" version of JSON Schema. Version 1.0 is projected to be released in 2025. In that release, the NERDm schemas will be updated to the "draft2020" version of JSON Schema. Other improvements will include stronger support for RDF and the Linked Data Platform through its support of JSON-LD.
Modified 2017-09-02 00:00:00
Publisher Name National Institute of Standards and Technology
Contact mailto:[email protected]
Keywords metadata , schema , data management , data repositories , JSON-LD , FAIR
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    "accessLevel": "public",
    "contactPoint": {
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        "fn": "Raymond Plante"
    },
    "programCode": [
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    ],
    "landingPage": "https:\/\/data.nist.gov\/od\/id\/5BD6C3C9109D1355E0531A570681CCEF1870",
    "title": "The NIST Extensible Resource Data Model (NERDm):  JSON schemas for rich description of data resources",
    "description": "The NIST Extensible Resource Data Model (NERDm) is a set of schemas for encoding in JSON format metadata\nthat describe digital resources. The variety of digital resources it can describe includes not only\ndigital data sets and collections, but also software, digital services, web sites and portals, and\ndigital twins. It was created to serve as the internal metadata format used by the NIST Public Data\nRepository and Science Portal to drive rich presentations on the web and to enable discovery; however, it\nwas also designed to enable programmatic access to resources and their metadata by external users.\nInteroperability was also a key design aim: the schemas are defined using the JSON Schema standard,\nmetadata are encoded as JSON-LD, and their semantics are tied to community ontologies, with an emphasis\non DCAT and the US federal Project Open Data (POD) models. Finally, extensibility is also central to its\ndesign: the schemas are composed of a central core schema and various extension schemas. New extensions\nto support richer metadata concepts can be added over time without breaking existing applications.\n\nValidation is central to NERDm's extensibility model. Consuming applications should be able to choose\nwhich metadata extensions they care to support and ignore terms and extensions they don't support.\nFurthermore, they should not fail when a NERDm document leverages extensions they don't recognize, even\nwhen on-the-fly validation is required. To support this flexibility, the NERDm framework allows\ndocuments to declare what extensions are being used and where. We have developed an optional extension\nto the standard JSON Schema validation (see ejsonschema below) to support flexible validation: while a\nstandard JSON Schema validater can validate a NERDm document against the NERDm core schema, our extension\nwill validate a NERDm document against any recognized extensions and ignore those that are not\nrecognized.\n\nThe NERDm data model is based around the concept of resource, semantically equivalent to a schema.org\nResource, and as in schema.org, there can be different types of resources, such as data sets and\nsoftware. A NERDm document indicates what types the resource qualifies as via the JSON-LD \"@type\"\nproperty. All NERDm Resources are described by metadata terms from the core NERDm schema; however,\ndifferent resource types can be described by additional metadata properties (often drawing on particular\nNERDm extension schemas). A Resource contains Components of various types (including\nDCAT-defined Distributions) that are considered part of the Resource; specifically, these can include downloadable data files, hierachical data\ncollecitons, links to web sites (like software repositories), software tools, or other NERDm Resources.\nThrough the NERDm extension system, domain-specific metadata can be included at either the resource or\ncomponent level. The direct semantic and syntactic connections to the DCAT, POD, and schema.org schemas\nis intended to ensure unambiguous conversion of NERDm documents into those schemas.\n\nAs of this writing, the Core NERDm schema and its framework stands at version 0.7 and is compatible with\nthe \"draft-04\" version of JSON Schema. Version 1.0 is projected to be released in 2025. In that\nrelease, the NERDm schemas will be updated to the \"draft2020\" version of JSON Schema. Other improvements\nwill include stronger support for RDF and the Linked Data Platform through its support of JSON-LD.",
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    "distribution": [
        {
            "accessURL": "https:\/\/github.com\/usnistgov\/oar-metadata\/tree\/integration\/model",
            "format": "GitHub folder",
            "description": "This directory contains the latest (and previous) versions of the core NERDm Schema and various extensions.  All files with names of the form, \"*-schema*.json\" are JSON Schema definition files; those that do not include a version in the file name represent the latest versions.  The latest version of the core schema is called \"nerdm-schema.json\", and schemas with names of the form, \"nerdm-[ext]-schema.json\", contain extension schemas.  All NERDm schemas here are documented internally, including semantic definitions of all terms.",
            "title": "The NERDm JSON Schema Files"
        },
        {
            "accessURL": "https:\/\/github.com\/usnistgov\/ejsonschema",
            "format": "GitHub repository",
            "description": "This software repository provides Python software that extends the community software library, python-jsonschema (https:\/\/github.com\/python-jsonschema\/jsonschema) to support NERDm's extension framework.  Use the scripts\/validate script to validate NERDm documents on the command line.  (Type \"validate -h\" for more information.)",
            "title": "ejsonschema: Software for Validating JSON supporting extension schemas"
        },
        {
            "accessURL": "https:\/\/github.com\/usnistgov\/oar-metadata\/tree\/integration\/model\/examples",
            "format": "GitHub folder",
            "description": "This folder contains example NERDm documents that illustrate the NERDm data model and use of extension schemas.  These all can be validated using the ejsonschema validate script.",
            "title": "Example NERDm Documents"
        },
        {
            "accessURL": "https:\/\/github.com\/usnistgov\/oar-metadata",
            "format": "GitHub repository",
            "description": "This software repository includes a Python package, \"nistoar.nerdm\", that aids in creating and handling NERDm documents.  In particular, it includes converters that convert NERDm instances into other formats (like POD, schema.org, and DCAT).  It can also transform NERDm documents conforming to earlier versions of the schemas to that of the latest versions.",
            "title": "NERDm Support Software"
        },
        {
            "accessURL": "https:\/\/github.com\/usnistgov\/oar-metadata\/blob\/integration\/model\/README-NERDm.md",
            "format": "text file",
            "description": "A general overview of the NERDm schema design and files",
            "title": "README"
        }
    ],
    "bureauCode": [
        "006:55"
    ],
    "modified": "2017-09-02 00:00:00",
    "publisher": {
        "@type": "org:Organization",
        "name": "National Institute of Standards and Technology"
    },
    "theme": [
        "Information Technology:Data and informatics"
    ],
    "keyword": [
        "metadata",
        "schema",
        "data management",
        "data repositories",
        "JSON-LD",
        "FAIR"
    ]
}