Semantic Web/linked data

Privacy, privacy enhancing technologies and the individual

Web Science Trust White Paper #1

2022

Themes: Privacy, Semantic Web/linked data

Category: White paper/report

Law has granted individuals some rights over the use of data about them, but data protection rights have not redressed the balance between the individual and the tech giants. A number of approaches aim to augment personal rights to allow individuals to police their own information space, facilitating informational self-determination. This reports reviews this approach to privacy protection, explaining how controls have generally been conceived either as the use of technology to aid individuals in this policing task, or the creation of further legal instruments to augment their powers. It focuses on two recent attempts to secure or support data protection rights, one using technology and the other the law. The former is called Solid, a decentralised platform for linked data, while the latter is a novel application of trust law to develop data trusts in which individuals’ data is managed by a trustee with the individuals as beneficiaries. The report argues that structural impediments make it hard for thriving, diverse ecosystems of Solid apps or data trusts to achieve critical mass – a problem that has traditionally haunted this empowering approach.

Linked data in government

IEEE Internet Computing, 17(4), 72-77

2013

Co-authors: Nigel Shadbolt

Themes: Semantic Web/linked data, Transparency/open data

Category: Journal article, Peer reviewed

Government data is powerful, plentiful, and relevant to citizens’ concerns. Making it open supports transparency, crowdsourcing data enhancement, and innovative service development. The authors review the state of linked open government data, in the context of the potential for the publishing organizations and the Linked Data Web itself, as well as the administrative and political issues raised.

The read-write Linked Data Web

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 371(1987), 20120513

2013

Co-authors: Tim Berners-Lee

Themes: Semantic Web/linked data

Category: Journal article, Open access

This paper discusses issues that will affect the future development of the Web, either increasing its power and utility, or alternatively suppressing its development. It argues for the importance of the continued development of the Linked Data Web, and describes the use of linked open data as an important component of that. Second, the paper defends the Web as a read–write medium, and goes on to consider how the read–write Linked Data Web could be achieved.

Linked open government data: lessons from data.gov.uk

IEEE Intelligent Systems, 27(3), 16-24

2012

Co-authors: Nigel Shadbolt, Tim Berners-Lee, Nicholas Gibbins, Hugh Glaser, Wendy Hall, mc schraefel

Themes: Semantic Web/linked data, Society, Transparency/open data

Category: Journal article, Peer reviewed

A project to extract value from open government data contributes to the population of the linked data Web with high-value data of good provenance.

Semantic Web

Robert A. Meyers (ed.), Computational Complexity: Theory, Techniques, and Applications, New York: Springer, 2810-2829

2011

Co-authors: Wendy Hall

Themes: Semantic Web/linked data

Category: Book chapter, Peer reviewed

Encyclopaedia article about the Semantic Web, containing a Glossary and a Definition of the Subject, together with discussions of: Linking Data; The Layered Model of the Semantic Web; Applications; Controversies; and Future Directions.