Re: beyond 'formal' relations: describing relations between scientific and non-scientific material

On Apr 1, 2009, at 1:57 PM, paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote:

> Dennis
>
> I am  also researching relations
>
>
> I have found reading about the following useful
>
> 1. lexical relations
> 2. OBO Foundry ontology of relations
>
>  some excerpts from Azamats posts and other writings
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2009-02/msg00315.html
>
> however I am much puzzled by the fact that relations are considere  
> as 'properties' of  class

They are not (usually) properties of a _class_. The terminology  
'property' as used in ontology languages like OWL (and description  
logics more generally) means the same as (binary) 'relation' as used  
in the broader mathematical community. I say binary because relations  
are more general, and can be trinary (like: A between B and C) or  
indeed of any number of arguments. So the properties are OF the same  
(kind of) things that are IN the classes and the same things that the  
relations HOLD between (whatever those things are, which may vary from  
case to case.)

> while in my view , or as in 'entity/relationship' representatio
> relations are a different primitive type (canonical class?) by   
> themselves

Most conventional logical notations segregate relations from the  
things ("individuals") they are relations on. OWL-DL and the OBO  
Foundry logics follow this 'segregated' convention. However, this is  
only a convention, and there is no fundamental logical requirement why  
this must be done: OWL-Full, RDF and Common Logic all do not make any  
strong distinction between relations and other entities.

Hope this helps

Pat Hayes

> , I would be intersted in a clarification of why/how is that so
>
>
> Paola
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 9:33 AM, Dennis - UT <dv.eprints@gmail.com>  
> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We are currently working on a repository for OAI ORE resource maps (http://www.openarchives.org/ore/1.0/toc 
> ). In this system we are trying to describe relations between  
> scientific publications and other material (both scientific and non- 
> scientific). To do this we are planning to use several (RDF)  
> vocabularies / ontologies.
>
> A question is: how to cope with diversity in scientific disciplines  
> and communication on the one hand and standardizing relation  
> descriptions when aggregating publications about a certain topic?  
> Vocabularies now available (FOAF, DCterms, etc) mainly restrict to  
> formal relations and do not include relations concerning the content  
> in a more detailed way than for instance 'dc:subject'. This may be  
> the consequence of the diversity in scientific semantics. Is there  
> any literature/article about this issue?
>
> An example case is describing relations between scientific  
> publications and their 'application'. For example: a publication  
> proposes certain changes, government policy makers later decide to  
> create actual policies based on this information. So far we didn’t  
> find any existing solution to describe such relations. Suggestions  
> on existing vocabularies to describe / annotate such relations are  
> very welcome, thanks!
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Dennis
> University of Twente
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Paola Di Maio,
> ****************************************
> Forthcoming
> IEEE/DEST 09 Collective Intelligence Track (deadline extended)
>
> i-Semantics 2009, 2 - 4 September 2009, Graz, Austria. www.i-semantics.tugraz.at
>
> SEMAPRO 2009, Malta
> http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/CfPSEMAPRO09.html
> **************************************************
> Mae Fah Luang Child Protection Project, Chiang Rai Thailand
>
>
>

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