Re: Advancing translational research with the Semantic Web

Phillip Lord wrote:
>>>>>> "EJ" == Eric Jain <Eric.Jain@isb-sib.ch> writes:
> 
>   EJ> Just catching up on reading papers :-)
> 
>   EJ> <http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/8/S3/S2>
> 
>   EJ> "It is also useful to know who believes something and
>   EJ> why. However, there is no standard way of expressing such
>   EJ> information about a statement [...]"
> 
>   EJ> Reification?
> 
> That's who, not why. The Gene Ontologies evidence codes are and
> references are much closer. 
> 
> Also, I am not sure of the semantics of reification. Does it mean "I
> made this statement", "I believe this statement" or "I am the person
> responsible for the evidence on which this statement is based". All
> three are independent I think.

I assume what it means depends on the property that is used? In place of 
(or in addition to) the popular dc:creator you could introduce properties 
such as supportedBy, or whatnot. Arguably the lack of established 
properties for such information may be a bit of a problem, but the paper 
goes on to mention named graphs as a possible solution, so that's not the 
level we're talking at. In any case, no big deal, just another piece of 
evidence that reification is an ugly neglected step-child :-)

Received on Wednesday, 16 May 2007 10:51:08 UTC