linking a symbol with a dataset

Hi all,
  On the call today we discussed the issue [1] of linking a symbol in
a triple (e.g. a subject, a predicate, *or* an object) to a dataset.
The use case for this is twofold : to provide a direct link between
data items and their datasets in a Linked Data manner, and to survey
the use of data items across datasets. While we agreed that using a
relation such as dc:isPartOf is fairly natural to link the triple
itself to the dataset, it is much less clear for linking the
components to the dataset. In Bio2RDF we used void:inDataset, but the
domain of this relation is a foaf:Document, so it muddies the
semantics by entailing a possible disjoint type with whatever the
subject has been typed with (e.g. protein, disease, etc).

We discussed the suitability of existing vocabularies, but none, to
our knowledge, clearly fit the situation. For instance, can
dc:isPartOf (http://purl.org/dc/terms/isPartOf) be used as a logical
partition of the dataset with the data item? or is SIO's refers to
(http://semanticscience.org/resource/refers-to) potential suitable, if
not somewhat vague?

We welcome your thoughts on the matter. Do you know of a suitable
relation? Should we consider some new relation such as utilizes /
is-utilized-in or is-data-item-in / has-data-item?

Cheers!

m.

[1] https://github.com/joejimbo/HCLSDatasetDescriptions/issues/90

Michel Dumontier
Associate Professor of Medicine (Biomedical Informatics), Stanford University
Chair, W3C Semantic Web for Health Care and the Life Sciences Interest Group
http://dumontierlab.com

Received on Monday, 8 December 2014 17:05:11 UTC