How should URI for organisations be implemented? Switch to the latest release

Published on: 28/03/2017 Last update: 08/11/2017

Issue

URI needs to be available for the publisher to reference the organisation responsible for making the dataset available in the dataset description.

The discussion on the issue is available here.

Current situation

The reference of the organisation is made using the Dublin Core terms dct:publisher which requires a rdfs:Resource as its range.

The reference can thus be made using a URI or a blank node.

Recommendation

A URI needs to be available for the publisher.

Rationale

As the use of blank nodes is discouraged for resources that can be reused in multiple descriptions, a URI needs to be available for the publisher. In some environments, a central URI set is available or in the process of being set up.

Why is the use of blank nodes discouraged?

As described by W3C, blank nodes have no particular identity beyond their location in a graph, meaning that blank nodes are simply indicating the existence of a thing, without using an IRI to identify any particular thing. This results in the impossibility to match blank nodes in the mapping of different RDF graphs. It has two consequences:

the number of triples that need to be deleted and added in order to transform one RDF graph to another increases; and
it does not allow to detect the changes between subsequent versions of a Knowledge Base.

Example

An example of an official collection of URIs is the MDR Corporate body Name Authority List at the Publications Office of the EU. For instance, an organisation such as the European Coal and Steel community (ECSC) has the following URI: http://publications.europa.eu/resource/authority/corporate-body/ECSC
In Belgium, there is an unofficial list KBO data based on data from the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (BCE/KBO).

Future activities

The cooperation between European and national levels could be considered to share approaches and to find common ways to assign URIs to organisations.