Re: [dxwg] Attribution does not cover most MARC relators and other roles (#1521)

Thanks @bertvannuffelen for your thoughts.

> I am not going to argue about the correctness of the above analysis, but if I am correct: your request is to change the definition for [qualified attribution](https://w3c.github.io/dxwg/dcat/#Property:resource_qualified_attribution) from
> 
> _Link to an Agent having some form of responsibility for the resource_
> 
> to
> 
> _Link to an Agent_
> 
> Removing the additional restrictive scoping of _responsibility_. And as a consequence also replace the mapping from prov:Attribution to something else (below).
> 
> Then the DCAT community should answer the question: "what was the motivation to **solely include** responsability roles?".

To be precise, what I propose is that DCAT includes vocabulary to express resource-agent relations in which the agent does not bear responsibility for (an implicit or explicit activity that lead to) the existence of the resource. Concretely, this would include relations like dedicatee, addressee and recipient.
Example:
```
x:novel123
  a x:ContentItem, dcat:Resource ;
  dcat:qualifiedInvolvement x:i_0ae58f ;
.
x:i_0ae58f
  a dcat:Involvement ;
  dcat:involved x:agent42 ;
  dcat:hadRole x:dedicatee ;
.
x:agent42
  a foaf:Agent ;
  x:name "Susan Roe" ;
.
```
As for the question "what was the motivation to **solely include** responsability roles?", I think the answer is oversight. The DCAT documentation advertises `prov:Attribution` as a way to express entity-agent relations like those included in MARC and other sources. However, because of the PROV-definition, many of those relations **cannot** be expressed with `prov:Attribution`. This is not immediately obvious; it involves close-reading the PROV-documentation. I do not think it can be expected that PROV will change this, as it would impact PROV at its core. This leaves a gap, because, as the DCAT documentation states, it is useful to include relations such as the MARC relators in general. 

I agree that application profiles remain important in all cases. However, this is not about adding detail and restrictions to generic DCAT vocabulary, it is about filling a gap. Moreover, it is a gap that can easily lead people to misuse `prov:Attribution`. One could argue that this is PROV's problem, not DCAT's, but the higher goal is FAIR descriptions of catalogued items.

As for @dr-shorthair's suggestion to use the term party: I like this suggestion but I have second thoughts because 'party' has, in English, the exact same ambiguity as 'agent': it can be used as a relational term ("A and B are parties to this contract"). A term like 'volitional being' would be less prone to relational readings. I think that, in the end, it is best to stick to `foaf:Agent`.


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Received on Wednesday, 6 July 2022 12:17:25 UTC