Validating metadata files at any level of a BIDS dataset

Software Support
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Summary of what happened:

Hi,

I’m currently working on BIDS BEP028 (BIDS-Prov) and trying to validate datasets using a custom BIDS schema.

As part of this BEP, we would like to introduce metadata .json files that are not sidecars ; like dataset_description.json, but these new files could be at any level of the dataset. Here is an example (see files with *):

dataset
├── dataset_description.json
├── prov
│   └── *prov-test_soft.json
├── README
└── sub-01
    ├── prov
    │   └── *sub-01_prov-test_soft.json
    └── anat
        └── sub-01_T1w.nii

It seems that the BIDS specification allows metadata .json files at any level (see Common principles - Brain Imaging Data Structure 1.10.0) but is there a specific place in the BIDS schema where I should declare these files ?

For now, validating these .json files returns the following error :

[ERROR] SIDECAR_WITHOUT_DATAFILE A json sidecar file was found without a corresponding data file

  • /prov/prov-test_soft.json
  • /sub-01/prov/sub-01_prov-test_soft.json

I do not understand if this is because the validator considers all .json files as sidecars, or because the schema does.

Thanks !