HEREDITARY Project

Part of EU Open Research Repository
Published February 27, 2026 | Version v1.0.0
Standard Open

FEGA Metadata Technical Report: EGA v2 model

Authors/Creators

  • 1. ROR icon European Bioinformatics Institute
  • 2. ROR icon European Molecular Biology Laboratory
  • 3. ROR icon Centre for Genomic Regulation
  • 4. ROR icon Instituto Superior Técnico
  • 5. ROR icon BioData.pt
  • 6. INESC-ID

Contributors

  • 1. ROR icon University of Oslo
  • 2. ROR icon National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden
  • 3. ROR icon Science for Life Laboratory
  • 4. EDMO icon Uppsala University
  • 5. National Bioinformatics Infrastructure Sweden (NBIS)
  • 6. ROR icon Centre for Genomic Regulation
  • 7. ROR icon European Bioinformatics Institute
  • 8. ROR icon Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre
  • 9. ROR icon University of Lausanne
  • 10. ROR icon SIB Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics
  • 11. ROR icon University of Łódź
  • 12. ROR icon Nantes Université
  • 13. ROR icon Alexander Fleming Biomedical Sciences Research Center
  • 14. ROR icon Harokopio University of Athens
  • 15. ROR icon Inserm
  • 16. ROR icon University of Tartus
  • 17. ROR icon University of Silesia in Katowice

Description

The Federated EGA (FEGA) Metadata Working Group (MWG) has designed a new, process-oriented metadata model intended to replace the EGA v1 model, used by Central EGA (CEGA) and FEGA nodes using Local EGA. It prepares the FEGA network for FAIR, linked-data interoperability across human omics. The model is under active development, and this report accompanies that work in progress. What exists today is an abstract specification and a first set of JSON Schema drafts with embedded JSON-LD contexts; detailed serialisations, production deployments and full validator roll-out are future milestones, not completed deliverables.

Core entities include Biomaterial, Protocol, Process, Datafile, Dataset, Policy, Data Access Committee (DAC), Study, Cohort, Project, Protocol Collection and DCAT-style Catalog objects. Validation through the open-source ELIXIR Biovalidator ensures both syntactic and selected semantic checks (e.g., ontology term validation). Use-case workshops in genomics, microarrays, proteomics, and microbiomes confirmed the model's flexibility without needing schema rewrites.

A transparent GitHub repository contains the schemas, documentation, versioning, automated workflows, and a change process aligned to FEGA's network governance. As the first stepping stones for future migration of the current EGA v1 model to the EGA v2 model, we propose completing the set of model schemas, an initial v1-to-v2 model mapper, and a test implementation at CEGA. Finally, we present a phased adoption by FEGA nodes and other stakeholders. This approach would culminate when the maturity and efficacy of the model have been proved end-to-end and the model shift can happen in the production environments.

Files

FEGA Metadata Technical Report v1.0.0.pdf

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Additional details

Cites
Presentation: 10.5281/zenodo.16087280 (DOI)
Poster: 10.7490/f1000research.1120212.1 (DOI)
Lesson: 10.5281/zenodo.14968151 (DOI)
Presentation: 10.5281/zenodo.14726856 (DOI)
Poster: 10.7490/f1000research.1119732.1 (DOI)
Poster: 10.7490/f1000research.1119417.1 (DOI)
Journal article: 10.1093/nar/gkab1059 (DOI)
Journal article: 10.1038/s41588-025-02101-9 (DOI)
Standard: https://hal.science/hal-02141614/ (URL)
Journal article: 10.7554/eLife.27041 (DOI)
Journal article: 10.1016/B978-0-12-385118-5.00029-3 (DOI)
Journal article: 10.1186/s40168-024-01991-x (DOI)
Journal article: 10.1093/bib/bbaf176 (DOI)
Journal article: 10.7554/eLife.65088 (DOI)
Journal article: 10.1186/s13326-023-00289-5 (DOI)

Funding

European Commission
HEREDITARY - HetERogeneous sEmantic Data integratIon for the guT-bRain interplaY 101137074
European Commission
ELIXIR - European Life-science Infrastructure for Biological Information 211601

Software

Repository URL
https://github.com/M-casado/fega-metadata-schema
Programming language
JSONLD , Python
Development Status
Active