Skip to main content

OpenAIRE XML schema change announcement

The OpenAIRE Technical Team is pleased to announce a new release of the OpenAIRE XML schema that fixes some inconsistencies and introduces new types of research results in addition to "publication" and "dataset".
The new schema is version 1.0 and it is available at https://www.openaire.eu/schema/1.0/oaf-1.0.xsd. Documentation is accessible at https://www.openaire.eu/schema/1.0/doc/oaf-1.0.html.

Major changes:

  1. Removal of "person" entities: 
    • Removed person schema (oaf-person-<version>.xsd)
    • Removed relationships to persons (oaf-common-1.0.xsd)
    • Added repeatable element creator in result (oaf-result-1.0.xsd). Example: 
      <creator rank="1" name="Rita" surname="Levi-Montalcini">Levi-Montalcini, Rita</creator><creator rank="2" name="Ada" surname="Lovelace">Lovelace, Ada</creator>
    • Added optional contact information elements: contactfullname, contactfax, contactphone, contactemail (oaf-project-1.0.xsd). Example:
      <contactfullname>Doe, John</contactfullname>
      <contactfax>theFaxNumber</contactfax>
      <contactphone>thePhoneNumber</contactphone>
      <contactemail>johndoe@email.org</contactemail>
  2. Avoid confusion between access right and license:
    • Element bestlicense renamed to bestaccessright (oaf-result-1.0.xsd)
    • Result instance with both accessright and license (oaf-result-1.0.xsd)
  3. More provenance information:
    • Result instances come with the following additional metadata field: collectedfrom, dateofacceptance (oaf-result-1.0.xsd)
    • Added the following attributes to the journal element: (oaf-result-1.0.xsd)
      • iss: issue
      • vol: volume
      • sp: start page
      • ep: end page
    • Added the following elements to related results: collectedfrom, url, pid (oaf-common-1.0.xsd)
  4. New fields for software: (oaf-result-1.0.xsd)
    • documentationUrl
    • coderepositoryUrl
    • programmingLanguage
    • type
Minor changes:
  • Added field contributor (oaf-result-1.0.xsd)
  • Element 'class' of the project funding tree is now optional (oaf-project-1.0.xsd)
  • Funding hierarchy (i.e. 'funding_level_X' elements) is now optional: fundingtree may only refer to the funder. (oaf-project-1.0.xsd)
  • Added the element openairecompatibility to related datasources (oaf-result-1.0.xsd)
  • Added provenanceaction attribute to all elements of type 'optionalClassedSchemedElement' (e.g. subject) (oaf-common-1.0.xsd)

XML records produced by OpenAIRE at the beginning of 2018 will be compliant to the new schema. If you want to see some records in the new format and start adapting your parsers to the new schema, feel free to download the samples from http://svn-public.driver.research-infrastructures.eu/driver/dnet40/modules/dnet-openaireplus-schema/trunk/schema/1.0/samples/ .

Please note that samples do not include the OAI header.

For any questions, please contact us at the OpenAIRE helpdesk: https://www.openaire.eu/support/helpdesk.

The OpenAIRE Technical Team