Making Use of the Linked Open Data Services for OpenAIRE: Querying Data about Research Results, Persons, Projects and Organisations

Presenters: Sahar Vahdati, Giorgos Alexiou

Proposers​: Sahar Vahdati, Giorgos Alexiou, George Papastefanatos, Christoph Lange (OpenAIRE LOD Services Team)
Keywords​: Research Metadata, Scientometrics, OpenAIRE, Linked Open Data, SPARQL Query Language
Meeting format​: Training session with a theoretical introduction/motivation (30 minutes) and practical introduction and demonstration (60 minutes) and an interactive hands­on session (60 minutes).

Technical requirements​: Participants will need a computer with an Internet connection and a browser.

Short introduction / Abstract:​

The OpenAIRE Infrastructure has recently been extended with Linked Open Data (LOD) Services. The metadata about different types of entities – research results (publications and datasets), persons, projects and organisations – that the OpenAIRE Infrastructure integrates are now being exposed as a Linked Open Dataset, i.e. according to standards and best practices for publishing data on the Web in a way that facilitates their discovery and reuse as much as possible. The core OpenAIRE LOD is increasingly being interlinked with relevant external LOD about similar types of entities to make a richer collection of information about research accessible from the OpenAIRE end, and to increase the visibility of the OpenAIRE data for data consumers coming from the other end, e.g., from external datasets about scientific events. We start with an introduction to the OpenAIRE data model and a general overview of the data integrated by the Infrastructure. We then introduce essential background on Linked Open Data: basics about the RDF data model for graphs of interlinked knowledge, about vocabularies, i.e. schemas for such RDF graphs, and about the SPARQL query language. Making the transition to the hands­on part, we present the different ways of accessing the OpenAIRE LOD: interactive browsing and exploration, simple queries via a form­based web frontend, fully expressive SPARQL queries, and a downloadable dump. We will discuss relevant questions that the OpenAIRE LOD and its interlinked datasets can help to answer, such as “what is the overall research output of a given project?”, “what organisations are more active than others w.r.t. projects and research results?”, “what is the academic CV of a given person (in terms of affiliations and research results)?”, or any other questions suggested by the audience before or during the session. Together with the audience we will sketch ideas for more user­ oriented front­end applications and services on top of the OpenAIRE LOD and will also point out conceptual and technical limitations of the LOD approach.

Intended audience​: Application/Service Developers, Web/Data/Knowledge Engineers