Linked Data Applications Research Articles

A discovery platform to improve visibility of linked data across Australia.

BackgroundMetadata plays a crucial role in the health research infrastructure ecosystem. Despite the abundance of metadata for data collections in Australia, there is no simple way for researchers to search for standardised metadata about linked and linkable data collections across sectors or jurisdictions, making it an arduous and time-intensive task. MethodsThe project comprised three phases: an initial scoping exercise to understand the current state of metadata and best practice; a national consultation involving researchers data linkage staff and data custodians to develop a high-fidelity prototype; and a final build and implementation phase. The platform underwent several prototyping and testing cycles to refine the digital experience. ResultsKey expert interviews confirmed that there is a wealth of metadata available in Australia, but it is difficult for researchers to access and evaluate. Consultations with researchers identified opportunities to standardise metadata and provide a centralised platform to enhance the discoverability of linkable data collections for research. High value platform features included searching, browsing and filtering capabilities, variable list metadata, standardised formats, sample data, and frequently asked questions. The final design and functionality reflected user consultations and data custodian input on feasibility and resulted in the standardisation of metadata for linked data collections across sectors and jurisdictions. ConclusionThe Population Health Research Network developed and implemented a metadata platform to enable researchers to assess and evaluate the suitability of data collections for data linkage projects more readily. Improved metadata accessibility will save time and enhance the quality of linked data applications.

Impediments to and readiness for Linked Data application in libraries: Pakistani information professionals’ perspective

Findings revealed that there is little evidence that exists of the implementation of LD technologies by libraries in developing countries. This study aims to examine the willingness of information professionals along with their perceived barriers to the implementation of LD technologies in Pakistani libraries. Data was collected from Pakistani librarians in an online questionnaire survey. There is broad interest and willingness to implement Linked Data technologies in Pakistani libraries while perceptions of the presence of barriers remain. Participants are willing to explore and learn more about LD technologies as well as advocate and promote the adoption of these technologies. They also want to attend events about LD technologies and their applications in libraries. Though they identified the existence of different potential barriers that have to do with themselves (e.g. lack of awareness of basic LD concepts), their institutions/libraries (e.g. they lack best practices regarding applications of LD in libraries), and the technology itself (e.g. new, complex, costly). These dynamics have implications for LD applications in libraries, especially those in developing countries. The current study is a valuable addition to the literature as no study has been conducted regarding the willingness to adopt LD in libraries and barriers to its implementation. Findings regarding barriers to implementation would helpful for policymakers and IT experts consider these challenges and work to minimize these challenges for the implementation of LD in Libraries.

A Linked Data Application for Harmonizing Heterogeneous Biomedical Information

In the biomedical field, there is an ever-increasing number of large, fragmented, and isolated data sources stored in databases and ontologies that use heterogeneous formats and poorly integrated schemes. Researchers and healthcare professionals find it extremely difficult to master this huge amount of data and extract relevant information. In this work, we propose a linked data approach, based on multilayer networks and semantic Web standards, capable of integrating and harmonizing several biomedical datasets with different schemas and semi-structured data through a multi-model database providing polyglot persistence. The domain chosen concerns the analysis and aggregation of available data on neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs), a relatively rare type of neoplasm. Integrated information includes twelve public datasets available in heterogeneous schemas and formats including RDF, CSV, TSV, SQL, OWL, and OBO. The proposed integrated model consists of six interconnected layers representing, respectively, information on the disease, the related phenotypic alterations, the affected genes, the related biological processes, molecular functions, the involved human tissues, and drugs and compounds that show documented interactions with them. The defined scheme extends an existing three-layer model covering a subset of the mentioned aspects. A client–server application was also developed to browse and search for information on the integrated model. The main challenges of this work concern the complexity of the biomedical domain, the syntactic and semantic heterogeneity of the datasets, and the organization of the integrated model. Unlike related works, multilayer networks have been adopted to organize the model in a manageable and stratified structure, without the need to change the original datasets but by transforming their data “on the fly” to respond to user requests.

Synospecies, a Linked Data Application to Explore Taxonomic Names

Synospecies is a linked data application to explore changes in taxonomic names (Gmür and Agosti 2021). The underlying source of truth for the establishment of taxa, the assignment and re-assignment of names, are taxonomic treatments. Taxonomic treatments are sections of publications documenting the features or distribution of taxa in ways adhering to highly formalized conventions, and published in scientific journals, which shape our understanding of global biodiversity (Catapano 2010). Plazi, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to liberating knowledge, extracts the relevant information from these treatments and makes it publicly available in digital form. Depending on the original form of a publication, a treatment undergoes several steps during its processing. All these steps affect the available digital artifacts extracted from the treatment's original publication. The treatments are digitalized, the text is annotated with a specialized editor, and cross-referenced and enhanced with other sources (Agosti and Sautter 2018). After these steps, the annotated text is transformed to the different structured data-formats used by other digital biodiversity platforms (e.g., Global Biodiversity Information Facility: Plazi.org taxonomic treatment database using Darwin Core Archive, generic linked data tools (e.g. lod view; RDF2h Browser) and other consuming applications (e.g Ocellus via Zenodeo using XML; openBioDiv using XML; HMW using XML; Biotic interaction browser using TaxPub XML; opendata.swiss using RDF) . While these transformations have been taking place for a long time now, Plazi is now experimenting with making this process more transparent: with the Plazi Actionable Accessible Archive (PAAA) architecture both addition and modification of the digitalized treatments trigger an extensible set of workflows that are immediately executed on the GitHub platform. Not only is the exact definition and code of every workflow publicly accessible, but the results, errors and execution time of every single workflow is accessible as well. This offers an unprecedented degree of transparency and flexibility in the data processing that we have prototypically implemented for the creation of the RDF data used by Synospecies. As with the W3C GRDDL recommendation (https://www.w3.org/TR/grddl/) XSLT is used to transform XML to RDF/XML, a concrete syntax of the early days of RDF still supported by most RDF tools, allowing the data to be read as RDF. The used XSLT document is part of the bundled gg2rdf GitHub action (https://github.com/plazi/gg2rdf) together with the other transformation steps required to generate a transformation result in the both human- and machine-readable RDF Turtle format. On the GitHub Actions page of the treatments-xml repository (https://github.com/plazi/treatments-xml/actions) one can see that every commit to this repository triggers a workflow run that takes approximately 12 minutes to execute. After that the transformation results are available in the treatments-rdf repository (https://github.com/plazi/treatments-rdf/). The commit of RDF data to the treatments-rdf repository triggers a webhook that loads the newly added data to the Plazi triplestore making it virtually immediately available in Synospecies.

Having Your Cake and Eating It Too: JSON-LD as an RDF serialization format

One impediment to the uptake of linked data technology is developers’ unfamiliarity with typical Resource Description Framework (RDF) serializations like Turtle and RDF/XML. JSON for Linking Data (JSON-LD) is designed to bypass this problem by expressing linked data in the well-known Javascript Object Notation (JSON) format that is popular with developers. JSON-LD is now Google’s preferred format for exposing Schema.org structured data in web pages for search optimization, leading to its widespread use by web developers. Another successful use of JSON-LD is by the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), which limits its use to a narrow design pattern, which is readily consumed by a variety of applications. This presentation will show how a similar design pattern has been used in Audubon Core and with Biodiversity Information Standards (TDWG) controlled vocabularies to serialize data in a manner that is both easily consumed by conventional applications, but which also can be seamlessly loaded as RDF into triplestores or other linked data applications. The presentation will also suggest how JSON-LD might be used in other contexts within TDWG vocabularies, including with the Darwin Core Resource Relationship terms.

Stalking the Resources for Security in Linked Data Applications Using Resource Description Framework

Following the accessibility of Resource Description Framework (RDF) resources is a key capacity in the establishment of Linked Data frameworks. It replaces center around information reconciliation contrasted with work rate. Exceptional Connected Data that empowers applications to improve by changing over legacy information into RDF resources. This data contains bibliographic, geographic, government, arrangement, and alternate routes. Regardless, a large portion of them don't monitor the subtleties and execution of each sponsored resource. In such cases, it is vital for those applications to track, store and scatter provenance information that mirrors their source data and introduced tasks. We present the RDF information global positioning framework. Provenance information is followed during the progress cycle and oversaw multiple times. From that point, this data is appropriated utilizing of this concept URIs. The proposed design depends on the Harvard Library Database. The tests were performed on informational indexes with changes made to the qualities??In the RDF and the subtleties related with the provenance. The outcome has quieted the guarantee as in it pulls in record wholesalers to make significant realities that develop while taking almost no time and exertion.

SinoPedia-A Linked Data Services platform for decentralized knowledge base.

Knowledge bases are largely developed and utilized in academic and industrial fields, such as DBPedia, VIAF, LoC, Getty, and which are published in the Linked Data format. However, if you want to view different resources on these knowledge bases, you have to switch between different web pages from these resources. Therefore, we proposed a decentralized data hub named SinoPedia, which consists of several linked data services and can re-publish these RDF data in one platform. Firstly, these different Linked Data services include: Linked Data Transformation Service (LDTS), Linked Data Query Service (LDQS), Linked Data Publishing Service (LDPS) and Linked Data Knowledge Service (LDKS). The resource URI is the basis and core of the linked data, thus we will focus on the resource forwarding mechanism in LDPS service which can rewrite resource URI using a global and standard format among knowledge bases. Some knowledge bases were configured in SinoPedia platform in this paper. In addition to the above services, Linked Data Reasoning Service (LDRS) and Linked Data Intelligence Service (LDIS) will be added to the platform in the future. In short, all of these Linked Data Services will form the core framework in order to providing a good linked data application ecosystem.

BIM-linked data integration for asset management

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the transfer of information from the building information modelling (BIM) models to either conventional or advanced asset management platforms using Linked Data. To achieve this aim, a process for generating Linked Data in the asset management context and its integration with BIM data is presented.Design/methodology/approachThe research design employs a participatory action research (PAR) approach. The PAR approach utilized two qualitative data collection methods, namely; focus group and interviews to identify and evaluate the required standards for the mapping of different domains. Also prototyping which is an approach of Software Development Methodology is utilized to develop the ontologies and Linked Data.FindingsThe proposed process offers a comprehensive description of the required standards and classifications in construction domain, related vocabularies and object-oriented links to ensure the effective data integration between different domains. Also the proposed process demonstrates the different stages, tools, best practices and guidelines to develop Linked Data, armed with a comprehensive use case Linked Data generation about building assets that consume energy.Originality/valueThe Linked Data generation and publications in the domain of AECO is still in its infancy and it also needs methodological guidelines to support its evolution towards maturity in its processes and applications. This research concentrates on the Linked Data applications with BIM to link across domains where few studies have been conducted.

Application of linked data technologies in digital libraries: a review of literature

Purpose This paper aims to describe how linked data technologies can change the digital library collections, what are the benefits of linked data applications in digital libraries and what are the challenges of digital libraries in linked data environment. Design/methodology/approach The present study is based on substantial literature review on the applications of linked data technologies in digital libraries. The search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Google Scholar were used to find the relevant literature for the study. Online databases such as Pro Quest, Science Direct, Emerald and JSTORE were also used to find the relevant literature of the study. Databases of Library Sciences Library and Information Science and Technology Abstracts and Library Information Science Abstracts were also used to find the relevant literature of the study. Library, linked data technologies, Semantic Web, digital library and digital collections were the main keywords which were used to find the relevant literature for the study. Findings The evolution of linked data technologies and Semantic Web has changed the traditional role of the libraries. Traditional libraries are converting into digital libraries and digital libraries are in a struggle to publish their resources on the Web using XML-based metadata standards. It has made capable the digital collections to be viewed by machines on the Web just like human. On the emergence of linked data applications in digital libraries, Web visibility of the libraries has been enhanced to provide the opportunities for the users to find their required quality information of libraries round-the-clock on the Web. National Library of France, National Library of Spain, Europeana, Digital Public Library of Americana, Library of Congress and The British Library have taken the initiatives to publish their resources on the Web using linked data technologies. Originality/value This study present several key issues for policy makers, software developers, decision makers and library administrators about linked data technologies and its implementations in digital libraries. The present study may play its role to facilitate the users of the Web who are enthusiastically interested to exploit the quality and authentic library resources on the Web round-the-clock. Search engines will also achieve their longstanding goal to exploit the quality resources of the libraries for their Web users to make their Web appearance more credible and trustworthy.

Adoption of linked data technologies among university librarians in Pakistan: Challenges and prospects

This study aims to explore librarians’ perspective about the adoption of Linked Data technologies along with their level of interest to adopt these technologies in Pakistani university libraries. It also identifies their perceived hindrances that obstruct them to adopt and effectively implement Linked Data technologies in libraries. This is a quantitative study based on survey research design. To meet the objective of the study, a self-constructed and validated questionnaire was used to collect data. Findings show that university librarians believe in the effective adoption of Linked Data technology in libraries. They perceive that Linked Data technology can enhance navigation between the traditional online tools to access library resources and Linked Data will soon be the standard for creating metadata and records for information resources management in libraries. They are eager to attend events about Linked Data application in their libraries and willing to explore ways to incorporate Linked Data standards in bibliographic records management as well. Barriers do exist such as the general lack of awareness of basic Linked Data concepts and best practices for this emerging technology. To foster the research and to set Linked Data best practices in libraries and other cultural heritage institutions, there is a potential to invest in this area in terms of financial and social capital.

Geocoding, Publishing, and Using Historical Places and Old Maps in Linked Data Applications

This paper presents a Linked Open Data brokering service prototype Hipla.fi for using and maintaining historical place gazetteers and maps based on distributed SPARQL endpoints. The service introduces several novelties: First, the service facilitates collaborative maintenance of geo-ontologies and maps in real time as a side effect of annotating contents in legacy cataloging systems. The idea is to support a collaborative ecosystem of curators that creates and maintains data about historical places and maps in a sustainable way. Second, in order to foster understanding of historical places, the places can be provided on both modern and historical maps, and with additional contextual Linked Data attached. Third, since data about historical places is typically maintained by different authorities and in different countries, the service can be used and extended in a federated fashion, by including new distributed SPARQL endpoints (or other web services with a suitable API) into the system.

Semantic Interoperability for Data Analysis in the Food Supply Chain

Food supply chains consist of many links and operate on a global scale with many stakeholders involved from farm to fork. Each stakeholder maintains data about food products that they handle, but this data is not transparently available to all stakeholders in the chain and trust in data sharing is low. In addition, there are various other data sources that contain interesting data for stakeholders in the food chain, such as import/export transactions, production (forecast) data, parcel crop information, local weather predictions and social media streams. To improve their production, growers and traders are very interested in trends in the market and activities in supply and demand. To make all stakeholders in the food chain benefit from these data sources and to share data more transparently, the Dutch horticulture and food domain is developing the HortiCube platform via which various data sources are made accessible to application developers using a secure, linked data application interface. This paper describes the design and engineering of the semantic approach to enable interoperability between data sources. This includes (1) a high-level design of the HortiCube, (2) the metadata ontology used for describing the contents of the data sources in the HortiCube, (3) the common horticulture model used to achieve semantic alignment between data sources in the HortiCube, (4) a test application for a specific product case and (5) a discussion of our results and future work on this topic. The main contribution of our research is the generic solution and ontology design to the semantic challenges that arise when different data sources are combined to answer analysis questions for the user.

Continuing Education in New Standards and Technologies for the Organization of Data and Information: A Report on the Cataloging and Metadata Professional Development Survey

This study uses data from a large original survey (nearly one thousand initial respondents) to present how the cataloging and metadata community is approaching new and emerging data standards and technologies. The data analysis demonstrates strong professional-development interest in Semantic Web and Linked Data applications. With respect to continuing education topics, Linked Data technology, BIBFRAME, and an overview of current and emerging data standards and technologies ranked high. The survey data illustrate that personal continuing education interests often varied from reported institutional needs. These results reflect the fact that library services and projects in these emerging areas have not yet progressed beyond the exploratory stage. They also suggest that cataloging and metadata professionals expect to be able to exercise a mixture of core professional skill sets including teamwork, communication, and subject analysis, and the ability to adapt and accommodate Semantic Web standards and technologies, digital libraries, and other innovations in cataloging and metadata services.

Readiness for and barriers to implementation of linked data by Pakistani libraries

ABSTRACTThe extant literature adequately documents Linked Data initiatives primarily undertaken and implemented in information environments and cultural institutions in Europe and North America. Information professionals play crucial roles in implementing those initiatives that can potentially improve access to knowledge and information. In order to gauge the level of Linked Data application in libraries and have a broader and global understanding, it is important that researchers also explore this topic in the context of libraries in developing countries. Accordingly, our aim in the current study was to assess the willingness and level of interest in the application of Linked Data by librarians in Pakistan as well as determine their perceptions of the barriers to Linked Data application in their respective libraries. A survey of information professionals in Pakistan showed a broad interest in implementing Linked Data technologies, while acknowledging that potential barriers exist. Where there is a skills gap, participants were willing to attend events to learn more about the technologies and their applications in libraries. These and other dynamics could have implications for the prospects of Linked Data applications in Pakistani libraries.

Constructing faceted taxonomy for heterogeneous entities based on object properties in linked data

The interlinking of data across the web, a concept known as Linked Data, fosters opportunities in data sharing and reusability. However, it may also pose some challenges, which includes the absence of concept taxonomies by which to organize heterogeneous entities that are from different data sources and diverse domains. Learning T-Box (Terminology Box) from A-Box (Assertion Box) has been studied to provide users with concept taxonomies, and is considered a better solution than mapping Linked Data sets with published ontologies. Yet, the existing process of automatically generated taxonomies that classify entities in a particular manner can be improved. Thus, this study aims to automatically create a faceted taxonomy to organize heterogeneous entities, enabling varying classifications of entities by diverse sub-taxonomies, to support faceted search and navigation for linked data applications. The authors have developed a framework on which each facet represented by an object property is used to extract portions of data in the data space, and an Instance-based Concept Taxonomy generation algorithm is developed to build a sub-taxonomy. Additionally, the strategies for sub-taxonomy refinement are proposed. Two experiments have been conducted to prove the promising performances of the proposed method in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

Kütüphanelerde bağlı veri modeli ve bibliyografik kayıtların geleceği

The ongoing development of digital culture and Web technologies has directly influenced and changed the standards, principles, rules, approaches and implementations about information organization and access. Today, the needs and trends are increasing in terms of enhancing visibility of information resources in libraries on web, integrating library data to the web, enabling different information systems to exchange data with each other, and revealing relationships / connections between data. In particular, semantic web and linked data applications provide libraries with significant opportunities to manage bibliographic records better and ensure better access to information. In this context, libraries are re-shaping services of bibliographic descrription and working hard in order to adapt to new developments. In this study, the concepts of semantic web and linked data will be explained and the effects of these concepts on libraries and the applications of linked data in libraries will be mentioned.

The YASGUI family of SPARQL clients1

The size and complexity of the Semantic Web and its technology stack makes it difficult to query. Access to Linked Data could be greatly facilitated if it were supported by a tool with a strong focus on usability. In this paper we present the YASGUI family of SPARQL clients, a continuation of the YASGUI tool introduced more than two years ago. The YASGUI family of SPARQL clients enables publishers to improve ease of access for their SPARQL endpoints, and gives consumers of Linked Data a robust, feature-rich and user friendly SPARQL editor. We show that the YASGUI family had significant impact on the landscape of Linked Data management: YASGUI components are integrated in state-of-the-art triple-stores and Linked Data applications, and used as front-end by a large number of Linked Data publishers. Additionally, we show that the YASGUI web service - which provides access to any SPARQL endpoint - has a large and growing user base amongst Linked Data consumers.

The Importance of Authoritative URI Design Schemes for Open Government Data

A major challenge when working with open government data is managing, connecting, and understanding the links between references to entities found across multiple datasets when these datasets use different vocabularies to refer to identical entities (i.e.: one dataset may refer to Microsoft as “Microsoft”, another may refer to the company by its SEC filing number as “0000789019”, and a third may use its stock ticker “MSFT”.) In this paper the authors propose a naming scheme based on Web URLs that enables unambiguous naming and linking of datasets and, more importantly, data elements, across the Web. They further describe their ongoing work to demonstrate the implementation and authoritative management of such schemes through a class of web service they refer to as the “instance hub”. When working with linked government data, provided either directly from governments via open government programs or through other sources, the issue of resolving inconsistencies in naming schemes is particularly important, as various agencies have disparate conventions for referring to the same concepts and entities. Using linked data technologies the authors have created instance hubs to assist in the management and linking of entity references for collections of categorically and hierarchically related entities. Instance hubs are of particular interest to governments engaged in the publication of linked open government data, as they can help data consumers make better sense of published data and can provide a starting point for development of linked data applications. In this paper the authors present their findings from the ongoing development of a prototype instance hub at the Tetherless World Constellation at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (TWC RPI). The TWC RPI Instance Hub enables experimentation and verification of proposed URI design schemes for open government data, especially those developed at TWC in collaboration with the United States Data.gov program. They discuss core principles of the TWC RPI Instance Hub design and implementation, and summarize how they have used their instance hub to demonstrate the possibilities for authoritative entity references across a number of heterogeneous categories commonly found in open government data, including countries, federal agencies, states, counties, crops, and toxic chemicals.

Opencsdb: Research on The Application of Linked Data in Scientific Databases

This paper introduces OpenCSDB, a linked data application in the scientific database of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CSDB) project. The background, applicability, implementation principles, software architecture, and application effects are discussed in detail. Linked data meets the needs of scientific databases as a low-cost, inclusive, adaptive, open access mechanism. Although there are new challenges, linked data can still be considered the best choice for scientific data. As proved by the achievement of OpenCSDB in the “Eleventh Five-Year” program, OpenCSDB will promote the sharing of scientific data and play a greater role in the “Twelfth Five-Year” program.

Affective graphs: The visual appeal of Linked Data

The essence and value of Linked Data lies in the ability of humans and machines to query, access and reason upon highly structured and formalised data. Ontology structures provide an unambiguous description of the structure and content of data. While a multitude of software applications and visualization systems have been developed over the past years for Linked Data, there is still a significant gap that exists between applications that consume Linked Data and interfaces that have been designed with significant focus on aesthetics. Though the importance of aesthetics in affecting the usability, effectiveness and acceptability of user interfaces have long been recognised, little or no explicit attention has been paid to the aesthetics of Linked Data applications. In this paper, we introduce a formalised approach to developing aesthetically pleasing semantic web interfaces by following aesthetic principles and guidelines identified from literature. We apply such principles to design and develop a generic approach of using visualizations to support exploration of Linked Data, in an interface that is pleasing to users. This provides users with means to browse ontology structures, enriched with statistics of the underlying data, facilitating exploratory activities and enabling visual query for highly precise information needs. We evaluated our approach in three ways: an initial objective evaluation comparing our approach with other well-known interfaces for the semantic web and two user evaluations with semantic web researchers.