Tracking changes through EARMARK: A theoretical perspective and an implementation

none3noThe Extremely Annotational RDF Markup, a.k.a. EAR- MARK, is an OWL 2 DL ontology that defines document meta-markup. It is an ontologically precise definition of markup that instantiates the structure of a text document as an independent OWL document outside of the text string it annotates, and through appropriate OWL and SWRL characterizations it can define organizations such as trees or graphs and can be used to generate validity constraints. In this paper we present an extension of EARMARK that al- lows us to describe how markup documents evolve in time, which complies with concepts expressed in the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR).openPeroni, Silvio; Poggi, Francesco; Vitali, FabioPeroni, Silvio; Poggi, Francesco; Vitali, Fabi

On the Lossless Transformation of Single-File, Multi-Layer Annotations into Multi-Rooted Trees

The Generalised Architecture for Sustainability (GENAU) provides a framework for the transformation of single-file, multi-layer annotations into multi-rooted trees. By employing constraints expressed in XCONCUR-CL, this procedure can be performed lossless, i.e., without losing information, especially with regard to the nesting of elements that belong to multiple annotation layers. This article describes how different types of linguistic corpora can be transformed using specialised tools, and how constraint rules can be applied to the resulting multi-rooted trees to add an additional level of validation

Applying spatial reasoning to topographical data with a grounded geographical ontology

Grounding an ontology upon geographical data has been pro- posed as a method of handling the vagueness in the domain more effectively. In order to do this, we require methods of reasoning about the spatial relations between the regions within the data. This stage can be computationally expensive, as we require information on the location of points in relation to each other. This paper illustrates how using knowledge about regions allows us to reduce the computation required in an efficient and easy to understand manner. Further, we show how this system can be implemented in co-ordination with segmented data to reason abou

Unlocking the potential of public sector information with Semantic Web technology

Governments often hold very rich data and whilst much of this information is published and available for re-use by others, it is often trapped by poor data structures, locked up in legacy data formats or in fragmented databases. One of the great benefits that Semantic Web (SW) technology offers is facilitating the large scale integration and sharing of distributed data sources. At the heart of information policy in the UK, the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) is the part of the UK government charged with enabling the greater re-use of public sector information. This paper describes the actions, findings, and lessons learnt from a pilot study, involving several parts of government and the public sector. The aim was to show to government how they can adopt SW technology for the dissemination, sharing and use of its data

Scientific Models: A User-oriented Approach to the Integration of Scientific Data and Digital Libraries

Many scientific communities are struggling with the challenge of how to manage the terabytes of data they are producing, often on a daily basis. Scientific models are the primary method for representing and encapsulating expert knowledge in many disciplines. Scientific models could also provide a mechanism: for publishing and sharing scientific results; for teaching complex scientific concepts; and for the selective archival, curation and preservation of scientific data. As such, they also provide a bridge for collaboration between Digital Libraries and eScience. In this paper I describe research being undertaken within the FUSION project at the University of Queensland to enable scientists to construct, publish and manage scientific model packages that encapsulate and relate the raw data to its associated contextual and provenance metadata, processing steps, derived information and publications. This work involves extending tools and services that have come out of the Digital Libraries domain to support e-Science requirements

Semantic Publishing: issues, solutions and new trends in scholarly publishing within the Semantic Web era

This work is concerned with the increasing relationships between two distinct multidisciplinary research fields, Semantic Web technologies and scholarly publishing, that in this context converge into one precise research topic: Semantic Publishing. In the spirit of the original aim of Semantic Publishing, i.e. the improvement of scientific communication by means of semantic technologies, this thesis proposes theories, formalisms and applications for opening up semantic publishing to an effective interaction between scholarly documents (e.g., journal articles) and their related semantic and formal descriptions. In fact, the main aim of this work is to increase the users' comprehension of documents and to allow document enrichment, discovery and linkage to document-related resources and contexts, such as other articles and raw scientific data. In order to achieve these goals, this thesis investigates and proposes solutions for three of the main issues that semantic publishing promises to address, namely: the need of tools for linking document text to a formal representation of its meaning, the lack of complete metadata schemas for describing documents according to the publishing vocabulary, and absence of effective user interfaces for easily acting on semantic publishing models and theories

A model-driven privacy compliance decision support for medical data sharing in Europe

Objectives: Clinical practitioners and medical researchers often have to share health data with other colleagues across Europe. Privacy compliance in this context is very important but challenging. Automated privacy guidelines are a practical way of increasing users' awareness of privacy obligations and help eliminating unintentional breaches of privacy. In this paper we present an ontology-plus-rules based approach to privacy decision support for the sharing of patient data across European platforms. Methods: We use ontologies to model the required domain and context information about data sharing and privacy requirements. In addition, we use a set of Semantic Web Rule Language rules to reason about legal privacy requirements that are applicable to a specific context of data disclosure. We make the complete set invocable through the use of a semantic web application acting as an interactive privacy guideline system can then invoke the full model in order to provide decision support. Results: When asked, the system will generate privacy reports applicable to a specific case of data disclosure described by the user. Also reports showing guidelines per Member State may be obtained. Conclusion: The advantage of this approach lies in the expressiveness and extensibility of the modelling and inference languages adopted and the ability they confer to reason with complex requirements interpreted from high level regulations. However, the system cannot at this stage fully simulate the role of an ethics committee or review board. © Schattauer 2011