Create DataCite Ontology to Allow Broader Interoperability

[AndreasMeier12]

What is the problem that your suggestion solves?

I am working on interoperability between different systems, mostly electronic lab notebooks and repositories.
Some of them do not follow the DataCite format but have the equivalent information expressed differently.

What solution might meet your needs?

An ontology would give these systems an unambiguous way to interoperate without any of them having to change their schema (and potentially break backward compatibility). It would also mean creating fewer individual integrations.

There have been unofficial ontologies for older versions, e.g. https://sparontologies.github.io/datacite/current/datacite.html. Something like this would be useful.

I created a draft for converting the DataCite xml to an ontology based on https://schema.datacite.org/meta/kernel-4.6/include/datacite-funderIdentifierType-v4.xsd using https://github.com/srdc/ontmalizer:
https://github.com/paulscherrerinstitute/datacite-ontology/blob/main/datacite.ttl

Your name

Andreas Meier

Your organization

ETH Zurich, Scientific IT Services

What alternatives have you tried or considered?

No response

Is there anything else you would like to share?

No response

What group(s) would benefit from your suggestion?

• DataCite members registering DOIs and metadata and administering accounts
• Developers building integrations with DataCite services
• Harvesters who index DataCite DOIs and metadata
• Individuals or institutions analyzing DataCite DOIs and metadata
• DataCite staff
• Other

If other group(s), please describe.

No response

[codycooperross]

Many thanks for raising this suggestion, @AndreasMeier12 ! We are tracking requests for a DataCite ontology elsewhere as well.

Is there a particular format and/or access method for the ontology that would be most useful to you?

[AndreasMeier12]

Thank you for your response.
I am most familiar with Turtle RDF, this would be most useful to me.

Could you refer to the other requests for the ontology so I can have a look whether we converge?

[selgebali]

Hi Andreas,
Thank you for raising this, I am really glad to see this discussion happening. I want to share some context and insights based on feedback we’ve gathered. While some of these conversations occured privately and I can’t share specific names, I can provide the key takeaways.

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From a recent survey, there was a strong requests for a unified approach to harmonizing the DataCite Metadata Schema with other standards. Specifically, people asked for:

• Better mappings between metadata schemas like Schema.org and DCAT to improve interoperability.
• RDF integration to support things like knowledge graphs and triple stores.

Unfortunately, the survey responses were quite high-level, so I don’t have additional details on these requests.

Additional feedback: RDF schema requests

Separately, I’ve had requests for an official and maintained RDF version of the DataCite Metadata Schema, or at least an up-to-date list of terms like RelationTypes in RDF format.

Some of the resources people mentioned include:

• BioPortal Ontology: This provides an RDF-based representation of the DataCite schema and terms, which could be a helpful starting point https://bioportal.bioontology.org/ontologies/DATACITE
• SPAR Ontologies: GitHub: https://github.com/SPAROntologies/datacite
• Web version: https://sparontologies.github.io/datacite/current/datacite.html
• RDA Metadata Standards Catalog: This catalog seems to have more up-to-date RDF resources: https://rdamsc.bath.ac.uk/msc/m11
• IVOA RelationTypes (Astronomy): https://www.ivoa.net/rdf/voresource/relationship_type/2016-08-17/relationship_type.html

These examples show that there’s interest and some existing work in this area, but also highlight the need for an official, centralized, and actively maintained mapping.

As @codycooperross mentioned, these kind of discussions are really valuable for us as we track community requests and explore ways to support evolving needs and we’d love to see some of these RDF use cases in practice.

Thank you again for bringing this up.