SocioBiblog : A Decentralized Platform for Sharing Bibliographic Information Aman Shakya 1, Hideaki Takeda 1, Vilas Wuwongse 2, Ikki Ohmukai 1 1 National Institute of Informatics, Japan 2 Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007 Oct 5-8, Vila Real, Portugal

Contents Introduction Problem Statement Proposed Solutions ◦ Semantic Blogging ◦ Adopted formats ◦ Decentralized information sharing ◦ Social network based aggregation ◦ Information Integration and Mixing Design and Implementation Related work Conclusions and Future work 2IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Introduction Online communities of researchers ◦ Researchers working on common area, sharing common interests ◦ Connected through blogs, social networks, etc Information sharing needs of researchers ◦ Share information about publications ◦ Bookmark publications ◦ Comment on each others’ publications ◦ Bibliographic information should be structured ◦ Receive latest information from fellow researchers ◦ Flow of information among socially connected researchers 3IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Introduction Nature of research communities ◦ Research communities are highly autonomous ◦ Different organizations, different systems ◦ Ad hoc and dynamic ◦ Researchers work on different topics at different times Current bibliographic information systems ◦ Central bibliographic repositories (Citeseer, Google scholar, DBLP, etc) ◦ Social collections (citeULike, BibSonomy, etc) ◦ Do not fully satisfy information sharing needs of research communities IADIS - WWW/Internet 20074

5 Problem Statement Current bibliographic information sharing systems are centralized ◦ Central point of control  central point of failure ◦ One size does not fit all  dynamic and varied nature of research communities Publishing systems and aggregation systems are isolated ◦ Effective information sharing needs both Lack of proper flow on information in networked communities

IADIS - WWW/Internet Proposed Solutions SocioBiblog Decentralized system Publishing and Aggregation functionality in a single unit Aggregation of information through Social Network links Integration, filtering and mixing of information channels

Semantic Blogging Builds upon traditional Blogging Adds semantic structure to blog items Enrich blog items with metadata Combines desirable features of Blogging and the Semantic Web ◦ Blogging – easy personal publishing ◦ Semantic Web – standard structured formats, interoperability Semantic blogging can serve structured bibliographic information sharing between different systems 7IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Adopted Formats SWRC (Semantic Web for Research Communities) ◦ Ontology for modeling entities of research communities (persons, organizations, publications, etc) and their relationships ◦ We use the Publication concept only RSS (RDF Site Summary / Really Simple Syndication ) ◦ Format used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries and news ◦ Allows compatible extensions 8IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Adopted Formats BuRST (Bibliography Management using RSS Technology) ◦ Lightweight specification for publishing bibliographic information using RSS 1.0 and bibliography-related metadata standards ◦ Uses SWRC and FOAF FOAF (Friend Of A Friend) ◦ Popular metadata format for describing people and relations between them 9IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

10 Proposed Solutions SocioBiblog Decentralized system Publishing and Aggregation functionality in a single unit Aggregation of information through Social Network links Integration, filtering and mixing of information channels

IADIS - WWW/Internet Publishing Aggregation SocioBiblog System Publishing Aggregation SocioBiblog System Publishing Aggregation SocioBiblog System Publishing Aggregation SocioBiblog System Web SocioBiblog – decentralized system for Publishing/Aggregation

SocioBiblog with Existing Systems on the Web 12IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Decentralized Aggregation Current aggregation system ◦ Web-based – centralized ◦ Standalone – cannot share information online Aggregate feeds on personal blogs ◦ Decentralized ◦ Personalized aggregation ◦ Sharing/redistribution of aggregated contents How to determine relevant sources? 13IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Social Network based Aggregation Researchers are connected by social network links (blogrolls, FOAF links) or co-authorship of publications Closely related people have similar interests and are eager to share resources and communicate Relevant resources may be aggregated from the social network neighborhood of a researcher ◦ friends and friends of friends Facilitate flow of information in the social network 14IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

15 Social Network based Aggregation

Information Integration and Mixing Information Source Integration ◦ Aggregate information from multiple distributed sources and integrate homogenously ◦ Information Sources  Socially linked people  Bibliographic information sources ◦ Common semantic standards make integration possible Metadata-based Filtering ◦ Aggregated feeds may be filtered by metadata elements ◦ Semantic structure provides better fine grained control 16IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Information Integration and Mixing Mixing feeds ◦ Customized information collection  Can be used as new information source  Can be mixed with other information sources ◦ Integration, filtering and mixing can form new powerful systems delivering useful streams of information 17IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Information Integration and Mixing IADIS - WWW/Internet ∑ Agg. Filter D ∑ Agg. Filter

Example Scenario 19

System Architecture 20IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Implementation Publishing System ◦ Data entry interface for various SWRC publication types (articles, inproceedings, etc) ◦ BibTeX import ◦ Quote metadata from different bibliographic sites using scrapers. ◦ Export formats  SWRC  BuRST feeds  BibTeX Online demo IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Publication metadata Metadata Export Comment on Publication Quoted Publication Metadata Annotation Trackback SocioBiblog interface 22

Publishing System Commenting mechanism ◦ Blog this Bookmarklet BibTeX Scrapers ◦ SocioBiblog instances ◦ ACM digital library ◦ Generic BibTeX scraper (applicable for Citeseer, DBLP, BibSonomy, CiteULike, etc) Publishes Blogroll and FOAF profile 23IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Title Highlighted Text “annotates” link Quoted BibTeX Trackback ping URL Blog this! 24IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Aggregated posts 25 Aggregation System

Posts by Co-authors Authors 26IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Aggregation System Social Network based Aggregation ◦ Aggregate from friendship neighborhood up to two levels deep ◦ Start from sources listed in Blogroll ◦ BuRST / RSS feed URLs can be retrieved from FOAF profiles FOAF crawler ◦ Gathers FOAF profiles in a database ◦ The crawled database can be searched for FOAF links of authors 27IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Aggregated search, filtering and mixing Search and sort by SWRC fields – title, author, year, type, etc Results exported as a new BuRST feed Subscribe to customized feeds and get instant notifications Combine the feed with other feeds 28IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Aggregated / Filtered BuRST feed 29IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Related Work Bibliographic information systems ◦ A semantics based publication management system using RSS and FOAF - Mika, P., Klein, M., Serban, R. ◦ Bibster – peer-to-peer bibliography system ◦ BibSonomy ◦ CiteULike, Citeseer, Google scholar, etc Semantic Blogging systems ◦ Semantic Blogging Demonstrator – HP labs ◦ Semantic Blogging using Haystack – Karger & Quan ◦ Semblog: Personal Knowledge Publishing Suite ◦ semiBlog - Möller et al. (now renamed as ‘Shift’) Yahoo Pipes, Dapper 30IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Conclusions SocioBiblog - Semantic blogging platform for decentralized sharing of bibliographic information A single unit capable of both publishing and aggregating information Act as an information broker to aggregate, filter and redistribute information Flexible handling of information channels and emergence of useful customized information channels Semantic Web offers the basis for structured information sharing and interoperability 31IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Future Work Incorporate domain ontology, such as a topic hierarchy Use full features of the SWRC ontology Semantic capabilities like semantic search and navigation Indexing and ranked search mechanisms Support semantic blogging clients like semiBlog Use wide variety of metadata 32IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Thank you! Questions / suggestions 33IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Blogging Publicly accessible web-based publication of periodic articles Usually in reverse chronological order Often serves as a personal journal Easy publishing on the Web Decentralized mechanism Provides ◦ RSS feeds for aggregation ◦ Commenting mechanism ◦ Blogrolls Foster communities 34IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007

Semantic Web “The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.” The Semantic Web, Scientific American, May 2001, Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler and Ora Lassila The Semantic Web is about two things ◦ Common formats for integration/combination of data drawn from diverse sources ◦ Language for recording how the data relates to real world objects 35IADIS - WWW/Internet 2007