What’s going on related to CEDAR?

New Java Library: CEDAR Artifact Library Now Available

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We’ve released a new Java library to make working with CEDAR metadata easier for developers: the CEDAR Artifact Library.

This lightweight library provides Java classes for modeling and manipulating CEDAR metadata artifacts—such as templates, template elements, fields, and instances. It’s designed to simplify the process of working with CEDAR’s JSON-based metadata structures by offering an intuitive, object-oriented interface for developers building tools, pipelines, or services that work with machine-actionable metadata.

Key capabilities include:

  • Parsing and serializing CEDAR JSON metadata
  • Full object models for templates, fields, elements, and instances
  • Built-in knowledge of CEDAR’s schema structure
  • Round-trip support for reading and writing JSON
  • Easy integration into Java-based metadata tools and validation workflows
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New Paper in Scientific Data: How CEDAR Enables Standardized Metadata Across HuBMAP—and Now SenNet

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We’re pleased to announce the publication of a new paper in Scientific Data titled
“Ensuring Adherence to Standards in Experiment-Related Metadata Entered Via Spreadsheets”
(Read the paper).

This paper outlines how the CEDAR Workbench has played a central role in ensuring that experiment-related metadata collected by the HuBMAP consortium adheres to FAIR principles and community standards—despite being entered by researchers using spreadsheets. It also describes the expansion of this approach into the SenNet program, demonstrating how metadata consistency and quality can scale across large, decentralized biomedical research consortia.

The Challenge: Researcher-Friendly Interfaces with Standards-Driven Metadata

Biomedical consortia like HuBMAP face a major challenge: researchers need to enter metadata that is rich, precise, and standards-compliant—but they overwhelmingly prefer working in spreadsheets. This poses a tension between usability and data quality.

Rather than force researchers to abandon familiar tools, the CEDAR team collaborated with HuBMAP to design a solution that lets researchers continue using spreadsheets while ensuring the underlying metadata adheres to formal standards.

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NIH CDEs Now Fully Supported in CEDAR for Metadata Authoring

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CEDAR now provides comprehensive support for NIH Common Data Elements (CDEs), making it easier than ever for researchers to incorporate standardized, reusable data definitions into their metadata. With this update, over 28,000 CDEs from the NIH CDE Repository have been ingested, semantically enriched, and published within the CEDAR environment for immediate reuse.

This NIH content complements the existing library of more than 80,000 CDEs from the National Cancer Institute’s caDSR, already accessible in CEDAR through earlier work. Together, these CDEs span a wide range of domains and enable more consistent, interoperable, and FAIR metadata collection across biomedical research projects.

CDEs as First-Class Metadata

CEDAR supports CDEs as structured metadata components, respecting the semantics and specifications defined by ISO/IEC 11179 and NIH practice. In CEDAR’s web-based Template Designer, each CDE includes:

  • Unique identifiers and versioning
  • Structured data types and value domains
  • Enumerated value sets (with ontology mappings via BioPortal)
  • Standardized and alternative question texts
  • Embedded provenance and deployment metadata

Researchers can assemble these CDEs into custom metadata templates without writing code, ensuring semantic consistency and compliance with community standards.

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New Release: cedar-model-typescript-library v0.7.0 Now Available

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We’re excited to announce the release of version 0.7.0 of the cedar-model-typescript-library, a lightweight, standalone TypeScript library designed to simplify working with artifacts that conform to the CEDAR Data Model Specification.

What’s New

Full Support for JSON Schema and YAML

The library now offers complete parsing support for CEDAR fields, elements, and templates from both JSON Schema and YAML sources. Whether you’re importing CEDAR artifacts or programmatically creating them, this version provides seamless translation between your code and the CEDAR model.

Programmatic Artifact Creation

Need to create fields, elements, or templates from scratch? Version 0.7.0 allows full programmatic generation of these artifacts, offering developers maximum flexibility when designing or modifying metadata structures.

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