PROPOSAL FOR AIMS AND STRATEGY OF THE EUROCRIS LINKED OPEN DATA TASK GROUP (LOD-TG) Meeting at Bath (UK), 10 th February 2012

Contents A (very-)short history of the LOD TG Proposed LOD TG aims and objectives The CERIF LOD recommendations Plan for 2012 Main deliverables Outlook

LOD TG antecedents 25 th May 2011: EuroCRIS membership meeting at Bologna hosts a joint workshop of EuroCRIS and the VOA3R project ( VOA3R presented its implementation of CERIF 1.2 on a social network context and combined with an aggregator of scholarly content metadata. The workshop includes discussion on issues about implementing a LD prototype in VOA3R. July 2011: Informal meeting of EuroCRIS members and technical team of VOA3R Discussion on key changes required in CERIF Presentation of a proposal for a mapping approach implemented in VOA3R. December 2011: LOD TG starts activity.

Aims and objectives Aim: Leveraging Current Research Information System (CRIS) data by exposing it through Web technology so that it can be interlinked and become more useful. Objectives: 1. Elaborating use cases and scenarios that show how the LD approach may solve problems of different stakeholders. 2. Analysing the regulatory and ethical issues associated with CERIF LD and the scenarios for sharing LD openly or with restrictions. 3. Producing recommendations to expose CERIF data or CRIS data in general as LD. 4. When required, informing the CERIF TG of potential changes in the CERIF model that may improve the utility of CERIF LD exposure. 5. Supporting the hosting of CERIF-based LD vocabularies in the EuroCRIS infrastructure. 6. Creating and maintaining mappings of the CERIF LD vocabularies to other vocabularies and/or ontologies. 7. Promoting the adoption of the LD approach by vendors and institutions in general.

The CERIF LD recommendations A document + a prototype implementation Separating the use cases to another document 2012: Limited to CERIF 1.3 Focus on an easy transition/extension of existing CERIF deployments. Divided into modules: Base, core mapping of CERIF entities. Recommendations for linking to bibliographical information. Optional modules: for advanced uses or experimental features.

Proposed working principles The LD recommendations adhere strictly to the semantics of the CERIF version considered. “Open world assumption” interpreted as “LD datasets offer an incomplete view on the entities”. It is assumed also that there is redundant (and maybe inconsistent) information on the same entities on the Web. Enrichments using additional ontologies or mappings go to optional modules. to keep the core implementation clear to vendors and stakeholders. Linking to other LD datasets are presented as suggestions, not implementation requirements. Integration via linking with institutional repositories (Drupal, eprints, etc.) is a key requirement.

Plan for 2012 Activities per objective: O1: Produce a “CERIF Use Cases for L(O/C)D exposure” O2: Study the technical and managerial challenges of Linked Closed Data (LCD) Cobden et al. (2011). A Research Agenda for Linked Closed Data. Proc. of the Second International Workshop on Consuming Linked Data (COLD2011) O3: Producing the “Recommendations for exposing CRIS data using the CERIF model” covering CERIF 1.3 (excluding full bibliographic information) and creating an associated Drupal 7 prototype implementation O4: Having continuous communication with the CERIF TG. O5: Preparing an install of the vocabularies, maybe based on Neologism. O6: Creating the CERIF-VIVO mapping. O7: Presenting the LD approach at EuroCRIS meetings and offering vendor-related information on the Website.

Mapping VIVO and CERIF Mapping at the level of the models – so involving the CERIF TG. An official mapping can be provided at EuroCRIS website. Import/export facilities are to be built in the context of FP7 project agINFRA.

Coordination procedures Document owners: responsible for the update of each of the documents: CERIF Use Cases for L(O/C)D exposure Recommendations for exposing CRIS data using the CERIF model CERIF-VIVO mapping Open discussion in EuroCRIS lists. Formal proposals sent to document owners and discussed and eventually voted in teleconferences. Technical activities will be supported by VOA3R and agINFRA tasks. Additional contributions with developer or IT staff effort are welcome.