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Semantic Technology

supporting science

Peter Mika / Dept. of Computer Science / Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam

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Overview

Two systems

One technology

Many possibilities

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flink

networks in science

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Flink

Social network data collection, aggregation, storage and visualizationTarget: the Semantic Web community

Semantic Web technologyOntology-based representation and reasoning

Try ithttp://flink.semanticweb.org

Open source (in part)Elmo API for Sesamehttp://www.openrdf.org

1st prize @ Semantic Web Challenge, 2004

5FOAF profiles Web Emails Publications

Representation,storage and reasoning

Presentation and Analysis

Data acquisition

Sesame Sesame Sesame Sesame

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Browsing

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Subcommunities

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Associations between research topics

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Geographic visualization

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Network analysis

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Network measures vs. status vs. performance

SWWS, ISWC chair (4) W3C co-chairs (2)Journal of Web Semantics (4)IEEE Intelligent Systems (3)

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openacademia

metadata for the masses

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Metadata micro-management

Repository for small research groupsSoftware you can download and installDistributed system (unlike CiteSeer, DBLP…)Open source

As easy as…Maintaining a BibTex/Endnote file for yourselfOptionally: filling out a form to create a personal/group profile

Instant gratificationFor the researcher: publication list and RSS feed for homepage by

adding a <LINK> tag and one line of JavaScriptFor the group: reporting, dissemination on group homepage etc.

http://openacademia.org

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Pimp your homepage

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Query interface

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Applying the BibTex stylesheet

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We got tagclouds!

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And social networks.

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RSS feeds, live bookmarks

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Publication list for homepage

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Architecture

Can be another openacademia

server!

Can be remote server!

XSLT transformation to produce to

produce HTML, BibTex etc.

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Semantic technologies

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The benefits: modelling & aggregation

ExplicitRDF/OWL allows to express and reason with what it means

for two things to be the same (smushing)

ExtendibleDesigned to be distributed both in terms of schema and

dataMappings between different schemas can also be

expressed in the language

FlexibleMappings can be partial, robustness*

StandardStandard languages (RDFS, OWL, SPARQL)Standard vocabularies (DC, PRISM, SWRC)Standard protocols (SPARQL)

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The drawbacks

Limited expressivitye.g. complex inverse functional propertiese.g. swrc:page, prism:startingPage and prism:endingPage

Ontology-based interchange is still partly social engineering

Scalability

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What about Web 2.0?What about Web 2.0?

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Folksonomies are ontologiesLarge number of individual tagging actions result in the emergence of the semantics of tags

Lightweight, dynamic* ontologies

P. Mika. Ontologies are us: A unified model of social networks and semantics. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2005), Yolanda Gil, Enrico Motta, Richard V. Benjamins and M. A. Musen (eds.) , Lecture Notes in Computer Science no. 3729, page 122-136, Galway, Ireland, November, 2005

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TaggingTagging interests in flink, topics of publications in

openacademia (also Connotea, CiteULike, bibsonomy etc.)

Tag interchange is problematic in generalflickr:ajax = del.icio.us:ajax ?flick:ball:Peter = flick:ball:John ?flick:ball:Peter:1990 = flick:ball:Peter:2006 ?

More flexible than controlled vocabulariesTracks the evolution of the language better

Should work for scientific objects (publications, presentations etc.)Users have the same object in mind when tagging, limited

community (scientific jargon)

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Blogging, semantic wikis

openacademia imports comments about publicationsRequired: blog search (auto-discovery?)

Semantic wikis are promisingMetadata directly in RDF Syntactic metadata for now (who

commented on what, what time)

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P2P?

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Example: Bibster

P2P bibliography sharing systemEach peer has an RDF triple store with

publication metadataAdvanced query routing based on semantic

models of the content and user interestsOutcome of the EU IST project SWAP and

winner of a number of awards, featured on Slashdot

No one uses it.Software you install – and keep running

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openacademia p2p

Servers of research groups are networked

Web-based infrastructure

VUA Stanford

openacademia.org/servers.rdf

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p2p spirit

flink and openacademia can be ‘edited’ by anyone

1. Create descriptions of publications, personal metadata, group and event definitions

2. Let our crawler find it

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future

bright

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TrendsChanging form of publishing

Demise of the journal as distribution channelCommunity reviewing

Demise of the journal as quality sealThe semantic conference

e.g. ESWC 2006

In general: More and more data

Increased connectedness of data sources

Productivity

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Do you still go to the library?

Do you still read journals?

Online repositories

Researchers

Who is involved?

Publishers

Libraries