Technical Issues in the Development of Knowledge-Based Services for the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web aims to extend the current Web with formal semantics in order to improve how users experience the Web, by ameliorating current activities and supporting the automation of some others. So far, current Semantic Web prototypes mostly aim at collecting and exposing information. Still, a semantic layer can support applying Knowledge-Based Systems techniques to the development of brand-new fully-fledged Knowledge-Based Services for the Web. In this paper, we present the technical issues that have to be faced in the development of such a kind of application by presenting the Online Design of Events Application: a Semantic Web-based design support system that assists event organisers in the process of preparing events such as workshops and conferences, by effectively reasoning over an inter-organisational process across the Web

A survey of UK university web management: staffing, systems and issues

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to summarize the findings of a survey of UK universities about how their web site is managed and resourced, which technologies are in use and what are seen as the main issues and priorities. Methodology/approach: The paper is based on a web based questionnaire distributed in summer 2006, and which received 104 usable responses from 87 insitutions. Findings: The survey showed that some web teams were based in IT and some in external relations, yet in both cases the site typically served internal and external audiences. The role of web manager is partly management of resources, time and people, partly about marketing and liaison and partly also concerned with more technical aspects including interface design and HTML. But it is a diverse role with a wide spread of responsibilities. On the whole web teams were relatively small. Three quarters of responding institutions had a CMS, but specific systems in use were diverse. 60% had a portal. There was evidence of increasing use of blogs and wikis. The key driver for the web site is student recruitment, with instituitional reputation and information to stakeholders also being important. The biggest perceived weaknesses were maintaining consistency with devolved content creation and currency of content; lack of resourcing a key threat while comprehensiveness was a key strength. Current and wished for projects pointed again to the diversity of the sector. Research implications/limitations: The lack of comparative data and difficulties of interpreting responses to closed questions where respondents could have quite different status (partly reflecting divergent patterns of governance of the web across the sector) create issues with the reliability of the research. Practical implications: Data about resourcing of web management, technology in use etc at comparable institutions is invaluable for practitioners in their efforts to gain resource in their own context. Originality/value of paper: The paper adds more systematic, current data to our limited knowledge about how university web sites are managed

Perspectives of academic web content managers on the effectiveness of web publishing and web hosting policies

The development of policy to handle the increasingly diverse issues that arise from web content management is becoming a concern for academic institutions. An exploratory investigation that seeks institutional web content manager perspectives from higher educational settings on current web publishing and hosting policy and issues is presented as a mixed-method research design, using both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, to investigate how field factors influence policy creation. A web-based version of a survey instrument was designed, piloted, and implemented for this investigation, and data is presented, and discussed in relation to current field literature. Findings indicate that web hosting and publishing policies increasingly fall under the purview of institutional Communications or Public Relations departments and that policy elements concerning web content do not yet match field recommendations in several key areas

European Digital Libraries: Web Security Vulnerabilities

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the web vulnerability challenges at European library web sites and how these issues can affect the data protection of their patrons. Design/methodology/approach – A web vulnerability testing tool was used to analyze 80 European library sites in four countries to determine how many security vulnerabilities each had and what were the most common types of problems. Findings – Analysis results from surveying the libraries show the majority have serious security flaws in their web applications. The research shows that despite country-specific laws mandating secure sites, system librarians have not implemented appropriate measures to secure their online information systems. Research limitations/implications – Further research on library vulnerability throughout the world can be taken to educate librarians in other countries of the serious nature of protecting their systems. Practical implications – The findings serve to remind librarians of the complexity in providing a secure online environment for their patrons and that a disregard or lack of awareness of securing systems could lead to serious vulnerabilities of the patrons' personal data and systems. Lack of consumer trust may result in a decreased use of online commerce and have serious repercussions for the municipal libraries. Several concrete examples of methods to improve security are provided. Originality/value – The paper serves as a current paper on data security issues at Western European municipal library web sites. It serves as a useful summary regarding technical and managerial measures librarians can take to mitigate inadequacies in their security implementation

A semantic web services-based infrastructure for context-adaptive process support

Current technologies aimed at supporting processes whether it is a business or learning process - primarily follow a metadata- and data-centric paradigm. Whereas process metadata is usually based on a specific standard specification - such as the Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) or the IMS Learning Design Standard - the allocation of resources is done manually at design-time, and the used data is often specific to one process context only. These facts limit the reusability of process models across different standards and contexts. To overcome these issues, we introduce an innovative Semantic Web Service-based framework aimed at changing the current paradigm to a context-adaptive service-oriented approach. Following the idea of layered semantic abstractions, our approach supports the development of abstract semantic process model - reusable across different contexts and standards - that enables a dynamic adaptation to specific actor needs and objectives. To illustrate the application of our framework and establish its feasibility, we describe a prototypical application in the E-Learning domain

Towards adaptive e-learning applications based on Semantic Web Services

The current state of the art in supporting E-Learning objectives is primarily based on providing a learner with learning content by using metadata standards like ADL SCORM 2004 or IMS Learning Design. By following this approach, several issues can be observed including high development costs due to a limited reusability across different standards and learning contexts. To overcome these issues, our approach changes this data-centric paradigm to a highly dynamic service-oriented approach. By following this approach, learning objectives are supported based on a automatic allocation of services instead of a manual composition of learning data. Our approach is fundamentally based on current Semantic Web Service (SWS) technology and considers mappings between different learning metadata standards as well as ontological concepts for E-Learning. Since our approach is based on a dynamic selection and invocation of SWS appropriate to achieve a given learning objective within a specific learning context, it enables the dynamic adaptation to specific learning needs as well as a high level of reusability across different learning contexts

MIREOT: the Minimum Information to Reference an External Ontology Term

While the Web Ontology Language (OWL) provides a mechanism to import ontologies, this mechanism is not always suitable. First, given the current state of editing tools and the issues they have working with large ontologies, direct OWL imports have sometimes proven impractical for day-to-day development. Second, ontologies chosen for integration may be under active development and not aligned with the chosen design principles. Importing heterogeneous ontologies in their entirety may lead to inconsistencies or unintended inferences. In this paper we propose a set of guidelines for importing required terms from an external resource into a target ontology. We describe the guidelines, their implementation, present some examples of application, and outline future work and extensions

The NIF LinkOut Broker: A Web Resource to Facilitate Federated Data Integration using NCBI Identifiers

This paper describes the NIF LinkOut Broker (NLB) that has been built as part of the Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) project. The NLB is designed to coordinate the assembly of links to neuroscience information items (e.g., experimental data, knowledge bases, and software tools) that are (1) accessible via the Web, and (2) related to entries in the National Center for Biotechnology Information’s (NCBI’s) Entrez system. The NLB collects these links from each resource and passes them to the NCBI which incorporates them into its Entrez LinkOut service. In this way, an Entrez user looking at a specific Entrez entry can LinkOut directly to related neuroscience information. The information stored in the NLB can also be utilized in other ways. A second approach, which is operational on a pilot basis, is for the NLB Web server to create dynamically its own Web page of LinkOut links for each NCBI identifier in the NLB database. This approach can allow other resources (in addition to the NCBI Entrez) to LinkOut to related neuroscience information. The paper describes the current NLB system and discusses certain design issues that arose during its implementation

Web Literacy for Evaluating Credibility of Web Information: Issues and Considerations

Because of a variety of procedures related to design and presentation of web content and structure, there would be a pressing need to consider issues of quality of web information in upcoming years. It is argued, in the current paper, that evaluation issues related to credibility and quality assessments are of high importance in web environment in comparison with traditional information environments. Some evaluation skills like authority, coverage, currency, objectivity, accuracy, critical thinking and information literacy all of which could be categorized as Web Literacy would be fruitful in doing so. There exists, however, lack of evaluation skills among users caused by their cognitive styles, prior knowledge, information skills and of web resources characteristics as well. Some other solutions like dialectical reading, information ethics and also institutional policymaking will also be taken into account at the end of the paper