Metadata application profile as a mechanism for semantic interoperability in FAIR and open data publishing

Abstract

Application profiles, also known as metadata application profiles, are customised collections of vocabularies adapted from various namespaces and tailored for specific local applications. These profiles act as constrainers and explainers for the (meta)data. Semantic interoperability is the ability of computer systems to exchange data in a mutually understandable manner, facilitating data sharing across diverse platforms and applications without compromising its meaning. As a critical component of semantic interoperability, application profiles enforce semantics to (meta)data, enhancing its openness, interoperability, and reusability. This study assesses the feasibility of representing a comprehensive application profile in a format aligned with the semantic web, ensuring interoperability between profiles and datasets. Dublin Core Description Set Profiles (DSP) is adapted as the modeling framework for metadata application profiles, steering the associated datasets toward RDF compliance. The research outcomes include “Yet Another Metadata Application Profiles” (YAMA) as a preprocessor grounded in the DSP framework for developing and managing metadata application profiles. YAMA facilitates the generation of various standard formats of application profiles, ensuring they are represented in human-readable documentation, machine-actionable forms, and even data validation languages. A data mapping extension to YAMA is proposed to ensure the semantic interoperability of open data, bridging non-RDF data structures to RDF, thus enabling the publication of 5-star open data. This ensures smooth dataset integration and the creation of linkable, semantically rich open datasets. The work emphasizes the pivotal role of application profiles in fortifying the semantic interoperability of (meta)data, thereby elevating dataset openness.