Public review DCAT Application Profile for data portals in Europe until 15 July 2013

Dear all,

This is to remind you of the public review period for an DCAT
application profile for data portals in Europe
(http://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/dcat_application_profile/news/dcat-app
lication-profile-data-portals-europe-released-public-rev). The review
period is open until 15 July 2013.

I would like to draw the attention of the members of the GLD WG to the
following points in the proposed Application Profile:

. The profile does not require implementations to have Distributions or
CatalogRecords. Distributions are optional in cases when a particular
Dataset is not, not yet or no longer available for access or download on
the Web.

. It defines a number of mandatory properties:

  o For Catalog:

    . dcat:dataset
    . dct:description
    . dct:license
    . dct:publisher
    . dct:title

  o For CatalogRecord:

    . foaf:primaryTopic
    . dct:modified

  o For Dataset:

    . dct:description
    . dct:publisher
    . dct:title

o For Distribution:

   . dcat:accessURL

Of course, other properties may be used for these Classes. A number of
additional properties are described distinguishing "recommended"
properties (encouraging implementations that transmit information to
provide information that is really useful if it is available) and
"optional" properties (which are nice-to-have).

. The Application Profile also specifies a number of properties that are
not in the base DCAT specification:

  o For CatalogRecord:

    . adms:status (to indicate whether the entry for the Dataset was
either created, modified or deleted

  o For Dataset:

    . adms:identifier (for identifiers that are not the URI in the
Catalog)
    . adms:version (to indicate the version of the Dataset)
    . adms:versionNotes (for information about the version, e.g. a
change log)

. In the area of controlled vocabularies, the Profile identifies a
number of requirements for the specific use in the European context:

  o Be published under an open license
  o Be operated and/or maintained by an institution of the European
Union, by a recognised standards organisation or another trusted
organisation
  o Be properly documented
  o Have labels in multiple languages, ideally in all official languages
of the European Union
  o Contain a relatively small number of terms (e.g. 10-25) that are
general enough to enable a wide range of resources to be classified
  o Have terms that are identified by URIs with each URI resolving to
documentation about the term
  o Have associated persistence and versioning policies

The proposed vocabularies are Eurovoc (http://eurovoc.europa.eu/) for
themes and theme categories, several EU Publications Office authorities
(http://publications.europa.eu/mdr/authority/index.html), the Dublin
Core Collection Description Frequency Vocabulary
(http://dublincore.org/groups/collections/frequency/) and a number of
ADMS-based vocabularies, e.g. for status and licence type.

As the members of this group represent a very knowledgeable community in
matters concerning the description of datasets and their implementation,
we would appreciate it if you could take the time to look at the
specification and send us your comments. 

Instructions on how to make comments are at
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/asset/dcat_application_profile/asset_release
/dcat-application-profile-data-portals-europe-final-draf. 

Many thanks, 

Makx.

Received on Monday, 8 July 2013 20:51:19 UTC