RE: substitute for skos:isSubjectOf

Why couldn’t you do something like:

 

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<rdf:RDF

  xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"

  xmlns:dct="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"

  xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2008/05/skos#"

> 

  <skos:Concept rdf:about="http://www.w3.org/">

    <skos:prefLabel>Black market</skos:prefLabel>

    <dct:relation>

      <rdf:Description rdf:about="http://zbw.eu/stw/descriptor/19289-4">

        <dct:subject rdf:resource="http://www.econis/...=Black+market" />

      </rdf:Description>

    </dct:relation>

  </skos:Concept>

</rdf:RDF>

  

 

 

From: public-esw-thes-request@w3.org [mailto:public-esw-thes-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Neubert Joachim
Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 9:57 AM
To: public-esw-thes@w3.org
Subject: substitute for skos:isSubjectOf

 

The SKOS Primer recommends using dc:subject for indexing purposes. For the inverse relation - this concept "is subject of" or "indexes" that resource - it gives no recommendation. The discussion about indexing properties in SKOS (commendably summarized in http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/wiki/SkosDesign/Indexing) also paid no attention to the now vanished skos:isSubjectOf. 

 

But it's definitively missing. My use case is this:

 

On the upcoming RDFa-enriched web pages for the Standard Thesaurus Economics (maintained by the German National Library of Economics, ZBW), we will include links to library resources. This links trigger a search for the concept at hand in the subject index of the library database - e.g. 

http://www.econis.eu/DB=1/LNG=EN/CMD?ACT=SRCHM&IKT3=46&TRM3=Black+market searches for the concept http://zbw.eu/stw/descriptor/19289-4 with the prefLabel "Black market" and returns a result page with further links to books, articles and so on (not RDFa-enriched up to now, but this could change). To enhance the Web of Linked Data, I want to express this relationship in RDFa also. A triple

 

http://zbw.eu/stw/descriptor/19289-4 <http://zbw.eu/stw/descriptor/19289-4>  skos:isSubjectOf http://www.econis.eu/...=Black+market 

 

would have been perfect. (Of cause, the inverse relation can be expressed easily by dc:subject, but that puts the descriptor in the object position.)

 

I understand that the missing relation may be, strictly spoken, not part of the KOS (but an application of the KOS to resources) and therefore may be outside the scope of SKOS. But nevertheless a substitute is required. 

 

It would be easy to define some custom property, e.g. zbw:indexes, with skos:Concept as domain and rdf:resource as range. But since I feel that this may be a requirement not only by our site, there should be a more common, standardized way.

 

I did some research on this, but was out of luck:

 

- dc:subject lacks an inverseProperty

- sioc:topic dito

- dcterms:references/dcterms:isReferencedBy seems to be aimed at citations and alike

- ore:describes/ore:isDescribedBy is too restricted in Domain/Range (ore:ResourceMap/ore:Aggregation)

- rdfs:seeAlso is too general

- frbr:isSubjectOf could be fine if domain and range are sufficiently general, but I couldn't figure out the status of this one (it is described as a skos:Concept in http://sandbox.metadataregistry.org/concept/show/id/923.html, but is not part of http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/core or http://purl.org/vocab/frbr/extended)

 

I'm convinced that terminologies - expressed in SKOS - could perfectly serve as hubs in a Web of Linked Data. To this end, it would be highly beneficial to figure out and recommend a uniform way to link from skos:Concepts to arbitrary other resources. Can we do this?

 

Kind regards, Joachim