Re: making statements on the semantic web

On Mon, 06 Aug 2007 18:17:10 -0400, Michel_Dumontier wrote:
> So a key concern for me is how I, as a user of public resources,
> should make statements about them on the semantic web. While
> certain data providers might already providing RDF/OWL data with
> some URI, what about those that have yet to do this? How do I make statements about these resources, without
> taking the responsibility of serving it up in my own namespace [4],
> which might ultimately not integrate with content from another 3rd
> party content provider.
> [4] http://bio2rdf.org/

The only practical solution I see is that a widely-recognized, neutral party starts minting URIs for those data providers that are not interested in URIs or RDF/OWL at the moment. This independent party should orient itself on the practices agreed upon in the HCLS IG community. It should implement the URIs and the URI resolution system in a way that makes it possible for those data providers to take over the administration of these URIs when they finally become interested.
This is, I think, what Science Commons / Creative Commons has started doing with the PURLs that were created for the Banff demo. I think that these PURLs have the best chance of becoming widely accepted. 
bio2rdf has started a similar effort, but compared to the work of Science Commons, bio2rdf is not perceived as 'widely-recognized and neutral'. I would also trust in the long-term stability of URLs referring to purl.org much more than those that refer to bio2rdf.org. This should not be read as criticism of the bio2rdf team; they are simply doing what really needs to be done with the resources they have at hand, which is a very laudable effort. 

- Matthias Samwald

Received on Tuesday, 7 August 2007 09:00:18 UTC