Linked Data Finland
Living Laboratory Data Service for the Semantic Web
This site is the Living Laboratory of the FIN-CLARIAH research infrastructure initiative, conducted by the Semantic Computing Research Group at Aalto University in collaboration with University of Helsinki and a large consortium of other Finnish universities and organizations.
Our goal is to make life easier for both Linked Data publishers and consumers on the Web. We base our work on the Linked Data principles and stack of standards founded on the semantic data model RDF, standardized query language SPARQL, and live HTTP URIs for identifiers.
5-star Linked Data
The baseline of our work is the 5-star Linked Data model, proposed by Tim Berners-Lee.
| ★ | Make data available on the Web in whatever format. |
| ★★ | Make data available as structured data (e.g., Excel instead of an image scan of a table). |
| ★★★ | Use non-proprietary formats (e.g., CSV instead of Excel format). |
| ★★★★ | Use URIs to denote things, so that people can point at your data. |
| ★★★★★ | Link your data to other data to provide context. |
8-star Linked Data
However, in our opinion, providing 5-star Linked Data is just the beginning. To actually make use of the datasets, consumers need more support in getting to know the underlying data models used, how well the data actually conforms to the models, as well as trustworthiness of the data. To these ends, we extend the model with three additional stars to encourage data publishers to make their data more re-usable:
| ★★★★★★ | Describe explicitly and publish the schemas used in the dataset (unless the schemas are already available elsewhere). |
| ★★★★★★★ | Explain the quality of the dataset against the schemas used in it, so that the user can tell whether the data quality matches her needs. |
| ★★★★★★★★ | Give explanations when the data is factually correct with respect to the real world and when possibly not. |
This added support should come with as little extra work as possible to the data publisher. Our hypothesis is that a lot of this can be done automatically, basing on the notion of Linked Data. A data publisher needs only to provide their data in the RDF format, a VoID metadata description about it, and the LDF.fi portal will automatically create a homepage for the publication with related services, such as a SPARQL endpoint, URI resolving services, etc. See the paper at the ESWC 2014 conference for more details about the underlying ideas, and well as the paper at the SEMANTiCS 2024 conference for a discussion about the 8th star.
Supporting Linked Open Data (LOD) services and semantic portals
The LDF.fi platform is in use supporting, e.g., the Sampo series of over 20 LOD services and semantic portals on top of them, targeted for Digital Humanities research. These portals, based on the national Finnish LOD infrastructure for Digital Humanities, the Sampo model, and Sampo-UI framework, have in some cases had millions of end users, demonstrating the potential of using Linked Open Data in practical applications.
Further Information
On the left, you find more information about the project and the datasets we are working on. By selecting a dataset, more information about the services related to the selected dataset can be found. Notice that it is also possible to publish your own data at the service.