Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange: a set of specifications, complementary to OAI-PMH, that define how to describe and exchange aggregations of Web resources (a 'compound digital object') using standard Web Architecture and Linked Data principles.

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 10 Jul 2026

Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A complex deposit comprising PDF, dataset, and a supplementary video bundled as an ORE Resource Map.
Is an instance
A Fedora repository exposing object compositions as ORE Resource Maps.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A zip file uploaded to a repository is not an ORE aggregation unless described by a Resource Map.
Not an instance
An OAI-PMH metadata record alone is not an ORE object.

Editorial commentary

Where OAI-PMH is concerned with batch harvesting of metadata records, OAI-ORE concerns the structure of digital objects whose components live at multiple URLs (e.g. a research article with PDF, supplementary data, figures, and a metadata record). ORE defines the ‘Resource Map’ (ReM) as a first-class resource describing the aggregation, expressible in Atom, RDF/XML, RDFa, or JSON-LD. ORE underpins linked-data-style repository content exchange and is used by Fedora-based repositories and several aggregators.

References

Lagoze C., Van de Sompel H., Nelson M., Warner S., Sanderson R., Johnston P., 'Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange Specifications' (openarchives.org/ore/), 2008.

Also known as

Object Reuse and Exchange

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="OAI-ORE"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/oai-ore" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/oai-ore",
  "name": "OAI-ORE",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/oai-ore",
  "description": "Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange: a set of specifications, complementary to OAI-PMH, that define how to describe and exchange aggregations of Web resources (a 'compound digital object') using standard Web Architecture and Linked Data principles.",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/research-info-systems#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/oai-ore",
  "sameAs": [
    "Object Reuse and Exchange"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-07-10T02:06:20",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

Referenced across the research world

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