Open Experiment Standard
Section 11 · OES Spec

Data lineage and provenance

What allows another system to trust — or reproduce — the result.

Provenance is what turns an OES document from a snapshot into a research object. Borrowing from RO-Crate-style thinking, an experiment is more than a JSON blob: it points to specific datasets, queries, code versions, and exposure sources. The provenance block records those pointers and, optionally, hashes that let consumers detect tampering.

Fields

FieldTypePurpose
provenance.createdByobjectPerson or system that created the experiment record.
provenance.exportedByobjectPerson or system that exported it.
provenance.analysisGeneratedBystringTool, notebook, warehouse job, or service.
provenance.dataSourcesobject[]Tables, datasets, event streams.
provenance.queryIdsstring[]Warehouse job or query IDs.
provenance.codeVersionstringGit commit or package version.
provenance.metricDefinitionVersionstringSnapshot version of the metric definitions.
provenance.assignmentSourceobjectWhere assignment came from.
provenance.exposureSourceobjectWhere exposures came from.
provenance.resultHashstringOptional hash of the result payload.
provenance.attachmentsHashstringOptional hash of attached files.