OSTrails Commons¶
The OSTrails Commons [Suchánek et al., 2025] (referred to also as ‘the Commons’ hereafter) is formally defined as a collection of open, reusable, and adaptable resources that collectively enable and enhance interoperability within the OSTrails ecosystem and beyond. These resources are designed to lower adoption barriers to integration by standardising interactions between tools, ensuring alignment with the OSTrails Interoperability Framework (IF) and Reference Architecture (RA) [Miksa et al., 2025]. The Commons is not standalone tools or services; rather, they provide the foundational elements that support and guide the development, operation, and evolution of interoperable research-supporting platforms. By bridging technical, semantic, and procedural gaps, the Commons facilitate collaboration and scalability while remaining flexible for adaptation to emerging technologies and diverse research contexts.
The Commons is built through iterative cycles, where specifications will evolve (either individually or in synchrony with other components of The Commons) to incorporate feedback from tool developers and other stakeholders. This iterative approach ensures that the Commons remains practical and adaptable. For this reason, entities in the commons are carefully versioned, and versioned releases are generated as required to ensure that the tools work together.
The Commons is guided by the Plan-Track-Assess Pathways defined by OSTrails, which provides a map of how tools interact to facilitate research workflows. The pathways flow through three primary Interoperability Frameworks (IF): the SKG-IF, the DMP-IF, and the FAIR-IF. As such, this living repository is similarly split into three chapters with the same names, containing the detailed record of the members of that sub-set of Commons artefacts.
Additional information¶
Check our deliverables for more information:
Tomasz Miksa, Mark Wilkinson, Paolo Manghi, and Marek Suchánek. D1.4 ostrails interoperability reference architecture v1. January 2025. doi:10.5281/zenodo.14795000.
Marek Suchánek, Jana Martínková, John Shepherdson, Tomasz Miksa, Jakub Jirka, Vojtěch Knaisl, Katja Moilanen, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, and Tassos Stavropoulos. D2.5 ostrails commons specifications. January 2025. doi:10.5281/zenodo.14795060.