DDI-RDF Discovery Vocabulary (Disco)

Under development

 

RDF namespace http://rdf-vocabulary.ddialliance.org/discovery#

Other representations

Content

 

Description

Disco defines an RDF Schema vocabulary that enables discovery of research and survey data on the Web. It is based on DDI XML formats of DDI Codebook and DDI Lifecycle.

Applications

This specification is designed to support the discovery of microdata sets and related metadata using RDF technologies in the Web of Linked Data. The vocabulary leverages the DDI specification to create a simplified version of this model for the discovery of data files. It is based on a subset of the DDI XML formats of DDI Codebook and DDI Lifecycle. It supports identifying programmatically the relevant datasets for a specific research purpose. Existing DDI XML instances can be transformed into this RDF format and therefore exposed in the Web of Linked Data. The reverse process is not intended, as the developers of the RDF discovery vocabulary have defined DDI-RDF components and reused components of other RDF vocabularies which make sense only in the Linked Data field.
 

Informational Documentations

 

Markup Examples

Implantations:
  • DISCO – Open-source reference implementation in Java.
  • MISSY – Open-source implementation of a project-specific data model extending Disco.
 

License

The DDI-RDF Discovery Vocabulary is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

 

Development Work

Development of a number of RDF Vocabularies including XKOS, DISCO and PHDD began in a workshop on "Semantic Statistics for Social, Behavioural, and Economic Sciences: Leveraging the DDI Model for the Linked Data Web" at Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics, Germany, in September 2011. This work has been continued at these three meetings: follow-up working meeting (Discovery vocabulary) at the 3rd Annual European DDI Users Group Meeting (EDDI11) in Gothenburg, Sweden, in December 2011; a second workshop on "Semantic Statistics for Social, Behavioural, and Economic Sciences: Leveraging the DDI Model for the Linked Data Web" at Schloss Dagstuhl in October 2012; and a follow-up meeting (Discovery only) at GESIS-Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences in Mannheim, Germany, in February 2013.

Future Work

There is no DDI working group for Disco. Individuals have been working on revisions and preparation for future publication.
 

Selected Articles